LIBRAR OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






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Diamond IE)itst. 



BY 



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MRS. JENNIE FOWLER WILLING, 

AUTHOR OF "THROUGH THE DARK TO THE DAY," ETC. 




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CINCINNATI: 
HITCHCOCK AND W A L D E N . 

NEW YORK: PHILLIPS & HUNT. 
1880. 



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Copyright by 

HITCHCOCK & WALDEN. 

1880. 








I. Diamond Dust, 7 

II. Thinking, 37 

III. Married People, 77 

IV. Saving the Life, 109 

V. Courteousness, 135 

VI. My Neighbor, 157 

VII. HOW TO GET RID OF " THE BLUES," 178 

VIII. Getting Rich, 193 

IX. Giving by Rule, 207 

X. Growing Old, 222 



JISMOKD pt^M. 



THERE are wonderful things to be seen in 
a watch factory ; plucky little machines that 
bite off a steel bar with one snap of their jaws, 
discriminating little machines that handle screws 
one hundredth of an inch in length, exact little 
machines that measure the sixteenth of a hair's- 
breadth. But the one bit of mechanism that 
may most stir the thought is the tiny tin saw 
that cuts the jewels of the watch. 

Yes, the delicate and difficult work of shap- 
ing the garnet and aqua marina, the ruby and 
sapphire, is done by a piece of tin — that soft, 
common metal. But notice ! Its edge is charged 
with diamond dust. 

Only the prince of gems can cut those pre- 
cious stones. The diamond may not work alone. 
Its power must be made available through some 
cheaper agent to which it is joined. Probably 
the tin holds the diamond dust all the more 
tenaciously on account of its own weakness. 

7 



8 DIAMOND DUST, 

Why may not some noble, discouraged worker 
learn from the little tin saw how the jeweled 
pivots are cut, upon which turn the wheels of suc- 
cess in the world's conquest for God? 

We are none of us content, unless we believe 
ourselves useful to others; and the broader our 
usefulness, the deeper and surer our peace. This 
principle sends delicate Christian women out of 
their snug homes, and sets them stumbling up 
into wretched attics, and down into dismal cel- 
lars. It sent scholarly Jesuits across the sea to 
freeze and starve among the North American In- 
dians. Sometimes a rich, full life is poured out 
unstintedly in unselfish service, and with small 
result. The note of such a failure might almost 
send a throb of pain through an angel's song. 

We all want to be useful. Children hear in 
a shell the moan of the sea. If Ave listen well, 
we can hear in the soul's confidences with itself 
a ceaseless moan for fellowship with God in his 
grand schemes of benevolence. 

This universal bent indicates the divine inten- 
tion. God uses human agents. He would use 
each of us to the limit of our powers, if we 
would meet the conditions of his inworking. 

When we see those who are specially useful, 
we demand of ourselves to know why we are not 
doing more. Might not we accomplish some- 



DIAMOND DUST. 9 

thing if only we could learn the secret of suc- 
cessful effort? 

The earnest soul asks itself, "Have I found 
the line of life in which I can do most ?" "Have 
I strength for any broader work than that which 
now occupies my time?" 

It is plain that to work successfully we must 
find first, what we can do best, then satisfy our- 
selves that our weakness is not a bar to success ; 
and learn, if we can, how the little tin saw we 
are set to manage can be charged with the dia- 
inond dust of divine power. 

First, let us see what God woidd have done. 
We set our w r atches by the jeweler's chronometer 
because we want them right. It tells us where 
the sun is, and only the sun can give us standard 
time. If we would have right notions of God's 
work, the Sun of Divine Rightness must give us 
our standard. We must turn to the true Light 
that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world. 

We can be thoroughly useful only when we 
work the works of God. And what are they? 
To the Word and to the Testimony. From 
God's imperishable Record alone we may learn 
to what service we are to devote ourselves. Let 
us read carefully. 

We find the stupendous miracle of creation 



10 DIAMOND DUST. 

chronicled in a few lines, while chapter after 
chapter is given to warning, exhortation, and 
entreaty that wandering souls may be rescued 
from ultimate loss and death. 

How simple is the story of the genesis of 
light, that wonderful effluence that makes possi- 
ble all growth and beauty! Kow marvelous its 
movements ! It puts its shoulder beneath all liv- 
ing things and lifts them toward the heavens in 
spite of the tremendous downward tug of gravi- 
tation. It brings note of suns so far away that 
a quarter of the life-time of the globe is needed 
to transmit the report. It pries into the minutest 
organism. It shows us the shuttles of life at 
work, weaving the living tissue; yet, marvelous 
as it is, the story of its birth is given us in a 
half-dozen words, though there is ample space to 
detail the penitence of a crucified thief, or the 
gratitude of a pardoned Magdalen. 

We can be genuinely useful only when we 
work in line with the purpose of God. He ren- 
ders the best service who does most to hasten 
the coming of the kingdom, be it by the con- 
quest of an empire or the conversion of a child. 

In seeking broad usefulness many blunder 
fatally. They mistake Mat for achievement, rep- 
utation for character, the huzzas of the crowd for 
the "Well done" of God. And they generally 



DIAMOND DUST. II 

find what they seek. "Verily, verily, I say unto 
you, they have their reward." They climb up 
where the altitude is more lonely, the landscape 
more drear, and they become only a better mark 
for the peltings of the envious. They have a 
few years of pampered egotism and then an eter- 
nal stumbling upon the dark mountains of ban- 
ishment from God. 

Greatness usually comes to the door a prince 
in disguise. We keep the door closed and wait 
for the chariot and outriders that never come. 

If we try to build for ourselves a pedestal 
that shall lift us into consequence, like children 
making cob palaces, our careless haste is con- 
stantly throwing down what w r e have set up; 
while, if we take some simple, humble work, 
and make of it all we possibly can, God working 
in us and with us, before we dream of such a 
thing it has grown to a height that lifts us into 
consideration. 

In our personal salvation, we are forever 
stumbling over the simplicity of God's methods. 
We must have some marvelous revealment of 
the divine glory, some unbearable ecstasy, in- 
stead of the peace of Christ, the quiet faith-that 
believes his Word. Our diamond must blaze 
forth a Koh-i-noor, a mountain of light, and we 
push it aside with our foot, because it seems to 



12 DIAMOND DUST. 

our dull eyes only a common pebble. So our 
opportunity comes to us, not as a glorifying, but 
as a plain, unwelcome duty — a cross. 

The line of life marked out for us by infinite 
wisdom is, of necessity, the very best possible. 

Our weakness is not a bar to successful effort. 
The statement of the most logical and exact in- 
spired writer is that God hath chosen the weak 
things of the world to confound the mighty. 
Not that he uses them when he can get no 
others, or when they are thrust in his way and 
he can not push them aside ; but of all in- 
struments, they are his choice; and the reason 
follows, "That no flesh may glory in his pres- 
ence." He does not choose the weak because 
the strength of the strong is in his way, for the 
strongest are weak enough. These things are 
hid from the wise and prudent and revealed unto 
babes, because the wise and prudent will not 
take the attitude so natural and easy for the 
babes. 

Tin is chosen instead of the richer metals to 
hold the diamond dust on account of its very 
poverty. 

God always uses means utterly inadequate to 
the result to be produced, that it may be thor- 
oughly understood that the excellency of the 
power is not of men, but of himself. Then 



DIAMOND DUST. 13 

needy souls will know that to him alone they 
must look as the source of help and strength, 
and not to the servants that do his bidding. 

God's use of inadequate means may be seen 
in the material world. 

When he makes an oak, he does not speak it 
into being by a word of power; he wraps the 
embryo in an insignificant nut, and drops it upon 
the ground. A foot presses it into the soil. 
The frost gnaws at its shell. Life touches the 
germ and sets the ''bioplasts" at work. They 
begin to weave an oak, and presently its tiny 
leaflets push their way through the ground, and 
up toward the light. The nip of a lambkin 
might destroy the little vegetable, but, guarded 
by the law of the survival of the fittest, it climbs 
away upward till its forehead is among the 
clouds. That immense, upright column of wood 
is all from the tiny embryo. 

When God would send a river forth on its 
mission of power and use and beauty, he does 
not open one of the earth's great arteries, and 
pour a mighty flood down the mountain side. 
A few drops trickle from beneath a stone. A 
baby's touch might turn the runlet this way or 
that. It slips away through grass and mosses 
till it catches a song in its heart, and dances over 
a pebbly bed, a thing of beauty and of gladness. 



14 DIAMOND DUST. 

Joining hands with kindred rills, it grows in 
power, gathering in its arms other streams, till 
at. last it rolls in might toward the ocean, bear- 
ing on its bosom the inland commerce of a people. 

When a continent is to be made, the Great 
Architect does not set the Titans hammering the 
mountains about under the sea, that he may lay- 
its base-stones. He gives the order to a tiny 
polyp that lives but a day; and presently the 
coral reef is thrown across the path of naviga- 
tion. Then the island lifts its head above the 
wave, and soon the continent becomes the home 
of races of living beings. 

The ocean lies still and quiet in its rocky 
bed, its deep heart unmoved by the tornadoes 
that thunder across its surface, tossing great 
navies hither and thither like handfirls of feath- 
ers. Yet, under the moonbeam's kiss, it lifts 
tons and tons of its waters from their place and 
throws them for leagues along the shore. 

Gravitation is a law so delicate that philoso- 
phers fumbled around it for centuries without 
being able to find it ; yet it is so mighty that, by 
it the Creator holds the universe in balance. 

The Master seems to have wrought by this 
rule of the use of inadequate means in his re- 
demptive and reformatory work. In his mira- 
cles he used means looking toward the end de- 



DIAMOND DUST. 15 

sired, yet always unequal to the result. His 
mightiest marvels were wrought by a word or a 
touch. When the multitude followed him out of 
their homes, so eager to hear the Word that they 
lost sight of their physical needs, he told his dis- 
ciples to give them food. He could have spoken 
into being a Himalaya of bread; but then the 
great lesson of the miracle would have been lost. 
He took the five loaves and the two small fishes, 
and blessed, and brake, and set the doubters cater- 
ing for the great rows of hungry people. Each 
took his pitiful bit of bread, and stumbled toward 
those whom he was to serve with a thousand 
keen eyes watching his movements. He broke 
off each piece in faith, and there was no lessen- 
ing of the supply, for the creative power of him 
who issued the command was brought into requi- 
sition by obedient trust. 

In the work of grace, the Lord Jesus Christ 
always wrought by the same rule. He com- 
mitted the tremendous work of the world's con- 
quest to a little company of Galilean peasants, 
though he might have chosen Judean rabbis, 
Athenian philosophers, or Roman poets and 
statesmen, or he might have called to his aid 
legions of angels. He left his work in the 
hands of a few fisher people, uncouth in man- 
ners, burry in speech, untrained in thought, with 



1 6 DIAMOND DUST. 

little to commend them to confidence, except 
their sterling sense and their faith in his power. 

Indeed, the entire scheme of salvation is 
based upon a contradiction of common opinions, 
diametrically opposed to all that the world believes 
requisite to success. Its vital point is trust in 
the crucified Nazarene. No wonder that it should 
be foolishness to the philosophic Greeks and a 
stumbling-block to the aristocratic, hierarchal 
Jews. 

In all time the great advance movements of 
reform have been by the use of means that had, 
of necessity, to be supplemented by divine power. 

During the dark ages, when a woman was a 
being to be treated with silly adulation or con- 
tempt, a plaything or a drudge, altogether unfit 
to be trusted with a knowledge of books or of 
affairs, even in those murky days, a woman was 
used for the evangelization of nearly every coun- 
try in Europe. 

Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, 
made Christianity the religion of the Roman 
Empire, and so of the civilized world. 

The Empress Olga brought Christianity into 
Russia ; and her grandson, Vladimir the Great, 
who established it as the religion of the empire, 
was converted through the agency of his wife, 
Anna of Constantinople. 



DIAMOND DUST. 17 

Hungary was brought to Christ through the 
efforts of Sarolta, a Christian princess, wife of 
King Geysa, and mother of St. Stephen. 

The Poles were converted under the reign of 
Micislas I, through the. influence of his Christian 
wife, Dambrouska. Olaf the Good, who became 
the apostle of Scandinavia, carrying the leaven 
of evangelism even to Iceland and Greenland, 
was the convert of his wife, Gyda. Our own 
British ancestors were indebted for the perma- 
nent establishment of Christianity among them 
to the efforts of good Queen Bertha. 

In the sixteenth century, a few earnest Ger- 
mans were praying that the emperor might be 
aroused to stand for the old spirituality that had 
been so nearly trampled out by papal aggression, 
and the answer came in the conversion of a 
miner's scape-grace son. 

While in the depths of despair the mighty 
doctrine of justification by faith dawned upon 
Luther's dark soul; and that belief of an ob- 
scure monk was God's engine for laying as level 
as the walls of Jericho the old bastions of papal 
power in Germany. 

Poor, alone, persecuted, he stood before the 
potentates of the empire at Worms with the 
simple, sturdy answ r er to the command to recant: 
' 'Hier stehe Ich> Ich kann nicht anders. So hilf 



1 8 DIAMOND DUST. 

mir Gott. Amen" When he was buried in the 
Wartburg out of the reach of friend and foe, 
he wrought the great work of the Reformation, 
the translation of the Bible into the speech of 
the people. In that work he gave Germany her 
language. Lifting a dialect into a speech by- 
translating into it the Scriptures, he made a vehi- 
cle of thought that rendered possible the mar- 
velous German literature that has followed. 
Greater still, he made permanent the Refor- 
mation. Always and ever the greatest is evolved 
from the least. 

The Anglican revival of the eighteenth cen- 
tury was born in an obscure rectory, where a 
woman was holding her nineteen children to a 
regimen as rigorous as that of West Point, and 
yet so gentle and tender, Dr. Clarke says, they 
had the reputation of being the most loving fam- 
ily in the county of Lincoln. 

With a verse-making, wool-gathering husband 
who had not practical sense enough to keep out 
of jail for debt, she not only looked well to the 
ways of her household, but she helped her boys 
with their classics, and through the intricacies of 
their religious experience. Little thought she as 
the days went on, crowded to the last second 
with infinitesimal cares, that she was laying the 
foundation of the greatest revival of spiritual 



DIAMOND DUST. 19 

godliness that these later centuries have wit- 
nessed. Little did even the wisest imagine that 
in that obscure rectory a moral renovation was 
being planned that was to change the life of 
millions — possibly even the polity of all civilized 
nations — piercing with its darts of light the 
gloom above all races the w r ide world over. Lay 
preaching has been the driving-wheel of the 
Wesleyan machinery. When God set it spin- 
ning, John Wesley's high-church prejudices made 
him unequal to the test. He came home from 
one of his itinerant tours, and, finding out what 
had been set on foot in his absence, he said to 
his mother, with unusual asperity, "So, Thomas 
Maxfield has turned preacher!" "Yes, and do 
you be careful how you lay your hand on that 
young man. He is just as certainly called of 
God to preach as you are." She kept him from 
throwing the band off the driving-wheel. 

When God thrust Wesley out to preach upon 
the moors and commons to the masses that 
could not be gathered into the churches to hear 
the Word, a storm of persecution arose and 
church doors were slammed in his face. His 
mother steadied his courage, "Never mind, my 
son, the work is of God. Go on, and leave re- 
sults with him." She stood by his side, that 
gray-haired old mother, when he spoke upon 



20 DIAMOND DUST. 

Kennington Common to twenty thousand people. 
But for that small and often overlooked factor, 
the mother's faith, where would have been the 
great scheme of evangelism? 

The Sabbath-school is unequaled in its power 
for the spread of the Gospel among the masses. 
Its beginning was humble enough. In 1769 
Hannah Ball established a Sunday-school in Wy- 
combe, England. Twelve years later another 
young woman, who afterwards became the wife 
of Samuel Bradburn, a celebrated lay preacher, 
suggested to Robert Raikes the idea of teaching 
the children the Word of God, and she walked 
with him through the streets of Gloucester when 
he went to the church with his little, ragged 
company to try the first experiment. The peo- 
ple hooted at the woman's whim, but "the hand- 
ful of corn upon the top of the mountains, the 
fruit thereof shakes like Lebanon." 

At the beginning of this century the Chinese 
Empire was closed against Christian truth. Its 
language, the speech of nearly half the people 
of the world, was without even a touch of Chris- 
tian literature. A Sunday-school teacher in- 
duced a street boy to come into her class. She 
gave him suitable clothing and he came one Sun- 
day. The next he was missing. She hunted him 
up, clothed him again, and brought him again to 



DIAMOND DUST. 21 

the school. He came only one Sabbath and disap- 
peared again. She persevered and the third time 
she succeeded in holding him in her class. A 
trifling matter, to be sure, but that boy was Rob- 
ert Morrison, who became the apostle to China, 
opening that vast empire to the Gospel of Christ. 

The American Board of Commissioners of For- 
eign Missions, belting the world with its success- 
ful work, grew out of the talk of some college 
boys sitting beside a hay-stack one Saturday 
afternoon, where they had taken refuge from a 
shower. They talked of the heathen and of the 
possibility of their conversion, and agreed to 
meet regularly to pray for the salvation of the 
pagan world, and out of that prayer-meeting grew 
the American Board. 

The Methodist Missionary Society, with its 
broad fields and noble workers, grew out of the 
effort of a little company of women who banded 
together and began work by sending a negro to 
teach the Indians upon the Western Reserve. 

But time would fail to speak of all the great 
schemes that God has inaugurated through the 
smallest agencies. Indeed, such a catalogue 
would cover the greater part of the divine work 
in the world, as this method is the rule instead 
of the exception. 

The Jews stumbled to their utter ruin over 



2 2 DIAMOND DUST. 

the simple, unpretentious coming of their Prince 
Messiah, the Desire of Nations. The reputed 
son of a carpenter, unheralded, except by the 
signs that accompanied his birth, why should 
they acknowledge his claim ? During his thirty 
years of waiting he moved about among them 
simply a thoughtful, young man, with sad, pa- 
tient eyes, differing from others only in probity, 
which was any thing but a passport to distinction, 
saying strange, wise things, but never bringing 
to pass any thing remarkable. 

He waited in insignificance and obscurity 
while the great world — His world — known to him 
in its ultimate atoms, turned silently on its axis, 
kissed by his sunbeams, touched by his frosts, 
enriched by the rains that he sent upon the evil 
and the good, its people filling their cup of con- 
demnation. 

At last His hour struck, and he stepped to 
the front, putting his shoulder to the mighty work 
of redemption. But even then he was unknown 
to Greek scholarship, unheard of in that magnif- 
icent city of the Caesars. Probably not a thinker 
in those superb old Indian and Chinese empires 
pronounced his name. He lived in a remote Ro- 
man province, hated and persecuted, and he died 
at last a felon's death. But Richter says of him, 
" He who was the holiest among the mighty, and 



DIAMOND DUST. 23 

the mightiest among the holy has, with his 
pierced hand, lifted heathenism off its hinges, and 
turned the dolorous and accursed centuries into 
new channels, and now governs the ages." 

Since it appears plainly that our weakness is 
no bar to successful work for God, how shall we 
get about it to have our weak human nature 
charged with the diamond dust of divine power ? 

1. We must understand our own weakness. 
This is the Sebastopol of the campaign, the key 
to the position. 

The Master said, "Without me ye can do 
nothing." He understood our puerile attempts 
at bolstering our own dignity. He knew how 
hard we would try to make ourselves and others 
believe that we were equal to the work in 
hand. He meant we should begin with a sense 
of utter inefficiency. Frederic the Great, with 
a little of the insight of genius, said that the 
three hardest words to pronounce are, "I was 
mistaken." 

We may be too polite to trumpet our own 
doings. We may have more sense than Long- 
fellow's Iago. 

" Very boastful was Iago. 
Never heard lie an adventure, 
But himself had met a greater ; 
Never any deed of daring, 
But himself hod done a bolder; 



24 DIAMOND DUST. 

Never any marvelous story, 

But himself could tell a stranger." 

Yet if we watch ourselves we will find that 
always, if we can, we turn the conversation away 
from those topics upon which we appear to dis- 
advantage, and toward those that show off our 
achievements. It comes so easy to say, ' ' When 
I was in the university," or, "When we were 
abroad," or, "When their High Mightinesses, 
So and So, were at our house." 

While we are filled with a sense of our own 
importance, we can not be partakers of the di- 
vine nature so as to be full of power by the 
Spirit of the Lord. 

We must not only be converted, we must be- 
come as little children. 

There is an inborn spirit of independence 
that must be gotten rid of as soon as possible. 

When Thales was asked what is the most 
difficult thing in the universe, he replied, "To 
know thyself." So tricky are we, we hide our 
real motives even from our closest self-scrutiny. 
We practice hypocrisy upon ourselves even when 
we are airing our sincerity and ingenuousness. 

We intone our confession of unworthiness 
with proper inflections and cadences. We are 
poor, miserable sinners, but not unfrequently our 
drawl of humility covers self-assertion as a wet 






DIAMOND DUST. 25 

cloth covers a dead man's face, making it all the 
more ghastly to them who have eyes. 

If somebody agrees with us in our declara- 
tions of incompetency, we catch ourselves sud- 
denly straightening our vertebral column, and as- 
serting stiffly that we are probably quite as wise 
and good as the majority of our neighbors. Much 
of the discipline of life is meant to make us see 
this defect of character. 

How plainly we see the independence of the 
little fellow toddling off on his two uncertain feet. 
If he can push open the gate he starts out wildly 
toward any point of the compass in the big out- 
side world, and how resolutely he resists with 
kicks and screams every attempt to force him 
back within safe and proper limits. 

If a mother leaves her little girl in charge of 
the house she is sure to find that the child forgot 
to feed the chickens and keep the pigs out of 
the garden, in her disastrous attempts to show 
that she can make pies and clean house all by 
herself. 

Older people dislike to be told to do what 
they think they understand as well as any body. 

' ' You had better take your shawl, Mary ; it 
will be cool coming home." 

" No, mother, I sha' n't need it." 

When we were upon the sidewalk, the young 



26 DIAMOND DUST. 

lady, who was more thoughtful in her introspec- 
tion than most people^ asked this question, 
"Why do you suppose I told mother I didn't 
need my shawl, when I meant to take it all the 
time, and should have done so if she had n't 
spoken about it — just as though I did n't know 
enough to take care of my health?" 

You are in a street-car that gets into some 
sort of trouble. "Don't be frightened," says 
a superior individual with that soothing cadence 
that is specially provoking. "Just sit still, 
there's no danger." You are on your feet in a 
moment. You are no baby. You probably 
know as well as he how to behave, danger or no 
danger. 

This personal hauteur is probably a remnant of 
the original human kingliness. But whatever it 
is, it is sadly in the way of good work, for be- 
fore honor is humility. 

Before we can be properly equipped for the 
divine service, we must know thoroughly that 
we are utterly helpless for good, except as God 
becomes the strength of our strengthlessness. 

Only God has power to help souls to a better 
life. He is jealous for the divine prerogative, 
not for his own sake, but for ours. 

A jeweler will not let his little boy tamper 
with a watch, no matter how dear the child may 



DIAMOND DUST. 27 

be to his heart. Not because he is afraid that 
his son may become a rival in business, but 
because he is afraid the little fellow will ruin 
the watch, if allowed to get at its wheels and 
ratchets. 

We know so little of the human spirit we 
can never be sure of saying or doing the right 
thing for its helping, except as our Father holds 
our hand, and speaks through our lips. 

There is an aloneness of grandeur about this 
awful human soul. It may be trampled in mire 
like a lost diamond ; it may be built into coarse, 
common wall like the broken, scattered Greek 
marbles, but an archangel would stand back 
abashed from the audacity of laying unbidden so 
much as the weight of a finger upon the delicate, 
immense mechanism. 

Shall we be so foolhardy as to attempt any 
reformatory work, except simply and only as in- 
struments in the divine hand ? 

When we get out of the swaddling bands 
of our selfhood, we are brought face to face 
with the ultimate facts of being, and charac- 
ter, and destiny, the dignity of the soul and its 
final future, and we become indifferent to our 
own apparent success or failure, so that the 
work in which we are permitted a part moves 
forward. 



28 DIAMOND DUST. 

2. We must have a sense of Gods adequacy to 
the work in hand, 

"For right is right, since God is God, 
And right the day must win. 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 
To falter would be sin. 1 ' 

In the Sacred Record we find that those who 
asked and received great things of God usually 
prefaced their prayer with a statement of the di- 
vine greatness. That, as I understand it, was not 
that they might propitiate the Deity by an as- 
cription of praise, for the best human attempts 
to tell him who and what he is must be to his 
ear mere limping, childish chirping. They said 
these things that their own minds might be sat- 
urated with the thought of his power, and the 
ease with which he could deliver them from 
troubles that seemed so great. 

Thus, when Hezekiah was in mortal terror 
before the coming of Sennacherib's host, he 
prayed before the Lord, and said: "O Lord of 
hosts, God of Israel, which dwellest between the 
cherubim, thou art the God, even thou alone, of 
all the kingdoms of the earth. Thou hast made 
heaven and earth." 

After the ascension of the Lord, when the 
little company of disciples found themselves pre- 
cipitated by their faith into a most unequal con- 



DIAMOND DUST. 29 

test with the authorities, they cried to God for 
help. With the fires of martyrdom beginning to 
scorch their faces, they felt intensely the need of 
a strong refuge; so they began their prayer by 
saying: "Lord, thou art God, which hast made 
heaven and earth and the sea and all that in 
them is," and immediately their faith touched 
the Divine Hand in the darkness, and the place 
where they w T ere was shaken by his presence. 
3. We must commit ourselves to the Divine 



There is such a tangle of paths before us, 
only one of which can be right, we are often 
bewildered to know what course to take. No 
human plummet can sound the abyss of diffi- 
culty. No human strength can bridge the chasm. 

Like Solomon, when he stood in the presence 
of the tremendous responsibilities of life, we say: 
"I am a little child, I know not how to go out 
or to come in." Our Heavenly Father sees the 
end from the beginning, and we have his prom- 
ise, "In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he 
shall direct thy paths." He will lead us, prob- 
ably not to that that will bring money or lux- 
ury, eclat or self-indulgence. If those accidents 
of life are in the way of a broad usefulness, we 
renounce them all, and he will save us from their 
allurements. 



30 DIAMOND DUST. 

John Wesley, the retiring, poetic, studious 
Oxonian, was led away from the quiet, scholarly 
life he would have chosen, to one packed with 
public cares and burdens and self-denials. For 
twenty long years he endured that miserable 
thorn in the flesh, a jealous, unprincipled wife. 
For half a century his Church bore down upon 
him with her broadsides of persecution, his 
brethren in holy orders usually leading the at- 
tack. When his followers had become so numer- 
ous that he had to be treated with a little leni- 
ency, he was afraid something had gone wrong 
with him, because he missed the mobs. 

The Apostle Paul was also of that fine, gen- 
tle, scholastic cast of mind that shuns notoriety 
and enjoys so intensely cloistered leisure with 
books. He was led of God in journeyings often, 
in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils 
by his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, 
in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, 
in perils in the sea, in perils among false breth- 
ren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings 
often, and, at last, he went to his throne from 
beneath the headsman's sword. 

The Lord Christ was a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief. He did not of himself 
choose the suffering, for he cried out during that 
supreme hour of anguish in Gethsemane, "If it 



DIAMOND DUST, 3 1 

be possible, let this cup pass from me; never- 
theless, not my will but thine be done." 

We can not pierce the awful mystery of that 
redemptive agony. He staggered through its 
surges of anguish, grappling with and mastering 
the powers of evil. He was heard in that he 
feared, and his dying cry, "It is finished/' was a 
victor's shout. The cross was his throne of tri- 
umph and it is our symbol of victory. 

We must drop into the little niche in the divine 
plan for which we were designed. We can work 
to advantage only when we move in harmony 
with the Unerring Will. 

4. We must have faith for results. 

God means at the earliest possible hour to 
set this wrong old world right. If we are in his 
hand, under his control, there is no possible 
chance for us to fail. 

" 111 with his blessing is most good, 
And unblest good is ill ; 
And all is right that seems most wrong, 
If it is liis dear will." 

They of whom the world was not worthy, 
who subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, 
obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 
quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge 
of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, 
waxed valiant in fight, and turned to flight the 



32 DIAMOND DUST, 

armies of the aliens, wrought all their marvels by- 
faith. But how can we attain "like precious 
faith ?" 

The Savior asked, "How can ye believe 
which receive honor one of another, and seek 
not the honor that cometh from God only." 

One of the first conditions upon which we 
may hope for the enlarged faith that is so impor- 
tant a factor in successful work for God is the 
renunciation of our desire for the approbation of 
others. That, however, is but one point of the 
complete self-surrender that is necessary. There 
must be a choice of the will of God in all things 
for all time. This must be as complete as we 
know how to make. Every suggestion of pos- 
sible service or suffering must be met with, 
"Yes, if it be his will, I will do it. I can trust 
him to keep me out of fanaticism and unneces- 
sary self-mortification. I simply put the conduct 
of my life into his hands." 

We must understand that the immanent God 
has a will in every item of our life, and the only 
safe and wise thing is for us to choose that will, 
no matter how our inclination may writhe and 
struggle and cry out in pain. 

Once when Marshal Ney was going into bat- 
tle he noticed that his knees were smiting to- 
gether from fear. Looking down at them, he 



DIAMOND DUST, 33 

said: "You may well shake. You 'd shake worse 
yet if you knew where I am going to take you!" 
That was Ney holding Ney in the line of duty, 
in spite of terror that curdled the blood, and it 
was by that resolute choice of right action that 
he earned the title of the "bravest of the brave." 

But how may we know that w r e are not cheat- 
ing ourselves, that we do in all things choose 
the will of God, that our surrender to him is 
complete? 

We know whether or not we are honest in 
our purpose to do this; and when we are re- 
minded of the depth and deceitfulness of the 
human heart, we may reply, "I know that the 
Holy Spirit, to whom I am indebted even for my 
desire to be wholly under his control, and who 
knows my motives to their last shade of mean- 
ing, — is able, and cares to show me, if I fail of 
a complete surrender. I am so sure of this, I 
venture to say to my friends, to every body, if 
need be, I know through my confidence in his 
helping power that I am wholly given to God." 

After that it is easy to believe that he has 
you in his hand, and he works in you to will and 
to do of his good pleasure the condition neces- 
sarily antecedent to your greatest usefulness. 

You may assert by faith in the blood of the 
everlasting covenant that he saves from the old 

3 



34 DIAMOND DUST. 

egotism and fits the soul for the best work for 
himself. 

The soul " enters into rest, " profound, sweet, 
holy. There is no further care about the choice 
of work. God, to whom the life is committed, 
will lead by his spirit so that all things shall 
work together for good. The responsibility of 
result is all with God. There is nothing to do 
but to go on gladly, trustfully, doing to the best 
of the ability what he would have done, leaving 
the outcome with him. 

The suffrage of the world and the "Well 
done" of God are given finally to those who 
work by this rule of submission and trust. 

™ Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes; they were souls that 

stood alone, 
While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious 

stone, 
Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline 
To the side of perfect justice mastered by their faith divine, 
By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme 

design. 

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track, 
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not 

back. 
And these mounts of anguish number how each generation 

learned 
One new word of that grand credo which in prophet-hearts 

hath burned, 
Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to 

heaven upturned. 



DIAMOND DUST. 35 

For humanity sweeps onward : where to-day the martyr stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas, with the silver in his hands, 
Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots 

burn, 
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return 
To glean up the scattered ashes for history's golden urn." 

A picture of Florence Nightingale represents 
her by the bedside of a dying soldier in a Cri- 
mean hospital. In the background a poor, 
homesick fellow has raised himself in his cot and 
is passing his hand caressingly, reverently over 
her shadow on the opposite wall — rendering un- 
conscious homage to her boundless self-giving. 

A friend wrote her once, asking for some facts 
of her life for publication. Her reply was about 
this: "There is nothing worth writing about me. 
I have done nothing, God has done all. He 
has been pleased to take a very plain, ordinary 
woman and use her in his service. I have worked 
hard, very hard, and I have never denied God 
any thing." 

Of another of the mighty ones whose weak life 
was so charged with the diamond dust of divine 
power that it cut through adamantine mountains 
of difficulty, the record is, "Abraham believed 
God, and he counted it to him for righteousness." 
Stanley says: "Powerful as is the effect of these 
words when we read them in their first untar- 
nished freshness, they gain immensely in their 



36 DIAMOND DUST. 

original language, to which neither Greek nor 
German, much less Latin or English, can furnish 
any full equivalent. ' He was supported, he was 
built up, he reposed as a child in its mother's 
arms ' [such seems the force of the Hebrew word] 
in the strength of God." 

And this is the privilege of every believer in 
the Lord Jesus Christ. That the weapons of our 
warfare may be so edged and driven by divine 
power as to be mighty through God to the pull- 
ing down of strongholds, we must have the sense 
of utter personal weakness, and of omnipotent 
help that comes only from complete obedience 
and restful trust. 



THINKING. 37 



THE demand of the time is for trained think- 
ing. The great need of God's work is con- 
secrated thought. 

We desire to be broadly useful. We attempt 
many things in which we fail. Our failures throw 
us into the deepest humiliation and despondency. 
We have seasons of resolving to be intensely vig- 
ilant and active, followed by corresponding lapses 
into unprofitableness. We never are, but always 
are to be, of some use in the world. Unless 
something changes the current and character of 
our effort, the chances are that old age or death 
will find us like some convocations of well mean- 
ing people, resolving and resolving, "only that 
and nothing more." 

Perhaps the clew that will lead us out of this 
labyrinth of failures may be found to be a habit 
of direct, sure thought under God's guidance. 

An item of advice given by the London ad- 
miralty to its seamen in regard to the manage- 
ment of a ship in a hurricane begins with this 
sentence; "Stand erect and look in the wind's 
eye." It may be well for us to stand erect and 



38 DIAMOND DUST. 

look in the eye the difficulties that hold us from 
our best possible achievement. If we find the 
trouble to lie in our slipshod, zigzag methods of 
thought, let us do our best to amend. 

An earnest glance at the world's affairs will 
convince us that thinking pays. It increases the 
mental volume. The more we do in any line, 
the more we can do. It is the arm that works 
that has muscle and vigor. It is the brain that 
thinks that has power to think to good purpose. 

Thinking has a market value. Deft fingers are 
worth far more in a business than clumsy ones 
are; and even in what seems simply to depend 
on physical skill, success hinges upon the quick- 
ness and sureness of the thought. There is no 
appreciable difference in the quality of the mus- 
cle, or blood, or nerve in the cunning or the 
awkward hand. The difference is in the mind 
that directs the movements of each. Success in 
any avocation is not usually a matter of special 
endowment, but of disciplined thought. 

What makes the difference in the w r ages of 
those who go out to service? You have a serv- 
ant whom you have to tell but once how you 
want a thing done. She understands and re- 
members. Her work is worth a dollar a week 
more than that of another who brings to you as 
pleasant ways, larger experience, and more mus- 



THINKING, 39 

cle, but who is forever forgetting or neglecting 
some important item of home comfort. You can 
well afford to pay the thoughtful housekeeper 
all she chooses to ask for her services. Her 
planning, " executive force," as we sometimes 
call it, adds at least one-half to her availability. 
Her thoughtfulness is of no small value to you, 
if it leaves you free to use your thought upon 
other and possibly more important matters, 
though it is not easy to believe that any business 
can be more important than that the home be 
kept as it ought to be. Many a failure is due to 
the ill -temper and the nervous unhingement 
caused by a smoky breakfast-room, burnt steak, 
or cold cakes. 

In mechanical operations the question of 
financial success hinges upon the formula, the 
more thought, the better pay. If one thinks 
nimbly and strongly enough to keep the muscles 
of two others at work, he becomes three men. 
If a hundred, he multiplies his producing force 
a hundred times ; and in just so far as he can 
think out the work of others better than they 
can do it for themselves, he is entitled to profit 
on their work. That is the way in which honest 
men get rich. If one can plan so that the 
strength of another is worth as much again as it 
would be without his thought, he is entitled to 



40 DIAMOND DUST, 

a share of the extra gains. That is fair. The 
thought field is open to all. If one wants the 
better paying position, let him learn also to think 
rapidly and reliably. 

It is hard work to learn thinking, but it ren- 
ders the best returns to all classes of workers, 
from the bootblack trying to establish his re- 
spectability by presenting a clean face in the Mis- 
sion school, up to Bismarck and Disraeli playing 
their cosmopolitan game, with kings and em- 
perors for chessmen. 

Great achievements are not accidental. They 
are the result of tireless thought. 

It was not the genius of a demi-god that so 
nearly laid Europe at the feet of the great Na- 
poleon. It was the ceaseless energy of a hercu- 
lean thinker. While other men slept, he would 
sit by the hour bending over his maps, and 
planning his campaigns. With colored pins he 
represented the forces in the contest. The green 
pins were Russians, the blue pins Prussians, the 
red pins the British, and the white pins his own 
soldiers. If the allied armies were to move upon 
a certain point, he would bring up his men by 
forced marches to its relief. If they crossed the 
river here, he would fall back so and so. Thus 
through the livelong night in that great, tough 
brain, armies were marching and counter-march- 



THINKING. 41 

ing, and those plans were wrought out that 
astonished the world with the brilliancy of their 
success. 

It holds true of every enterprise, whether it 
be for Satan, or self, or God; its success, other 
things being equal, depends upon the amount of 
clear, definite, co?itimimis thought that is given to 
its planning and execution. If one would work 
well, he must learn to think well. 

Few people study their mental movements 
carefully enough to understand their lack of 
ability for sustained thought. 

One may test himself by watching his at- 
tempts at listening to a lecture. He seats him- 
self with a determination to give his very best 
attention to the subject in hand. After two or 
three minutes some word of the speaker reminds 
him of a teacher of his, and in a twinkling he is 
in the old New England school-house, with the 
boys buzzing and shuffling and playing sly tricks. 
John Smith used to sit by him. Poor John ! He 
was killed in that Ashtabula disaster. What a ter- 
ble thing that was, to be sure. He would have 
been in it if he had n't lain over in Rochester. 
That trip to San Francisco was lucky all the way 
through. What a set those Chinese are that he 
saw there. How queer it would seem to be in 
China where all the people look like those odd 



42 DIAMOND DUST. 

specimens. He is called home from the Celestial 
Empire, not by the subject under discussion, but 
by a bustling step at his side — Doctor Dosem ! 
Wonder if he is as busy as he tries to make out! 
He has lost a good slice of the lecture by com- 
ing so late. The lecture ! Shades of the Greeks ! 
If that lecturer has not reached his thirdly, and 
not a word of secondly has caught the erratic 
attention of this average listener! 

Let him test himself in another way. Let 
him resolve to think steadily for ten minutes 
upon any given subject, whether it be the care 
of his health, the salvation of his soul, or any 
other vital matter. He will find his thought 
wandering like the eyes of a fool to the ends of 
the earth. If so much as a fly buzzes near, it 
will snap the gossamer thread of his thought and 
set it flying a thousand leagues from the subject 
in hand. 

How can we learn to tliink continuously and 
rapidly? How can this rickety, lumbering, un- 
reliable thinking-machine be put in such repair 
that it can be depended upon to do a given 
amount of work in a given time, and not waste 
nine-tenths of its force in dawdling? 

We learn thinking by thinking. Practice 
makes perfect. A little girl can not learn to 
make the thread go directly through the eye of 



THINKING. 43 

her needle till she has thrust it this side and that 
at least a thousand times. She can not learn to 
take up the proper amount of cloth at each 
stitch, and set each stitch beside the one nearest 
to which it belongs, till she has pricked her 
finger to roughness in false passes. 

A boy does not learn skating from lectures 
on that pastime, but by buckling on the skates 
and testing his ability to retain the perpendicular. 
He learns to let the center of gravity fall within 
the base from the penalty attending an infraction 
of that law, in the way of an emphatic bump on 
the ice now and then. 

We send our boys and girls to school, and 
they are crowded through declensions and para- 
digms day after day, not that by and by they 
are to earn a livelihood by repeating those in- 
tricate and bewildering linguistic differences, but 
they will need in any business the steady, straight 
thinking that can be developed only by these and 
similar exercises. 

When they venture out upon the glare ice 
of their lyceum argumentations and other wit 
contests, we clap hands and cry, " Bravo!" We 
know that they are learning the use of their 
metaphysical skates as certainly while their feet 
are gyrating through the air, and they are meas- 
uring their length in an intellectual tumble, as 



44 DIAMOND DUST. 

when they astonish lookers-on with wonderful 
evolutions in the mental rink. 

How can we train ourselves to direct thinking f 
Shall we choose a subject and sit down with a 
determination to lash ourselves over a given line 
for a given time, till we learn to go through the 
exercise properly? By no means. Our minds 
would resent such treatment and play us any 
number of shabby tricks, rather than submit to 
the arbitrary discipline. They would be as in- 
tractable as little girls whom antiquated maidens 
oblige to sew seams of infinite length and tedi- 
ousness by flourishing homilies over their heads, 
instead of beguiling the tiresome monotony by 
some pretty story or sentiment. We would re- 
bel so resolutely against the exercise that a nerv- 
ous fever or something worse would be the result. 

There must be something about which we 
think while we are learning to think that seems, 
for the time at least, to be worth the effort. 
There needs to be usually the social element 
enabling us to compare our work and progress 
with that of others, and receive stimulus from 
emulation and appreciation. Few are earnest 
and patient enough to work their way alone 
through the memorizing of the terminology of a 
science or language. It can be done, however, 
and it must be held as a dernier ressoil in case 



THINKING, 45 

one is deprived of the helps of teachers and class 
drill that are found in college study. 

If one is young enough the best thing is to 
take a collegiate course. Poverty is no excuse in 
this land where colleges are so numerous and 
democratic. If we set out upon a course of 
mental drill we will find it takes all the energy 
of the faculty with their " honors" and " stand- 
ing" and every motive they can bring to bear 
upon us to keep us at work. So lawless are we 
by nature, it will seem the supreme happiness to 
escape from the grinding machinery and turn 
Modoc or Arab or any body who does not have 
to study. The more our school work annoys 
us, the more certainly do we need it, and the 
more resolutely must we determine to drive or 
wheedle or coax ourselves through its drudgery. 

But suppose we are too old or too heavy- 
laden to go to school? What then? Let us set 
before us the example of the learned blacksmith 
and others who have done wonders in this line, 
even while earning their living at hard labor. 
Let us remember that all things are possible, 

" Heart within and God o'erhead." 

Let us mark out an easy line of study that we 
can hold evenly, and then let us not turn aside 
for any thing. 



46 DIAMOND DUST. 

I knew a woman who had the care of her 
house, doing all its work without help, and aid- 
ing her husband in his ministerial duties as far as 
she could, yet she managed to acquire the equiv- 
alent of a college course, and much besides. 
She swept her house to the rhythm of Tennyson 
and Longfellow. She bent over her ironing- 
board with a German grammar open beside her 
work, and repeated, Ich bin, dn bist y er ist, while 
she smoothed the sheets and pillow-cases. She 
crowded her house care into the closest possible 
compass — without robbing the home of its com- 
fort — that she might get time to study. That 
of itself was an excellent exercise. Along at 
first she gave only fifteen minutes a day to the 
language or science she was busy upon ; but she 
kept a close account with -herself, and if, by 
any chance, she lost the fifteen minutes, she 
made up the time ab* soon as the company was 
gone or the obstacle removed. By thus obliging 
herself to perform a given amount of work each 
day she was preparing herself for heavier duties 
in the future; and by saving the fragments of 
time she was acquiring the means for the better 
discipline and enrichment of her mind. 

In learning to think, What shall we study ? We 
may answer in general terms, Just what we do 
not want to study. Each line of mental exer- 



THINKING. 47 

cise is meant to develop the powers in a certain 
direction. If a given line is easy and agreeable, 
it is quite certain that one has already the devel- 
opment that would be the result of that disci- 
pline. For instance, linguistic drill gives quick- 
ness, nimbleness of thought. If one translates 
readily from one language into another, he is 
obliged to spring from one to the other with the 
utmost rapidity. You are talking to a German. 
You think "house," but, before you can recall 
its German equivalent, the French "maison" that 
you learned in your childhood thrusts itself for- 
ward impertinently and almost drops from your 
tongue tip. You dart back and rummage a 
drawer full of Greek and Latin odds and ends. 
Something suggests the kinship between the En- 
glish and German, and, the ear getting a chance 
to give a hint, you bring out the word you are 
looking for — "/iaus." That portion of duration 
called time has been gliding along all this while, 
and, as in a beginner's practice upon the piano, 
there are such long pauses between the objective 
points, your speaking is any thing but concise 
and correct. 

When the student of music learns^ to think 
rapidly enough to get his perception of the note 
in the printed lesson telegraphed to his hand, 
bringing his finger down upon the right key, 



48 DIAMOND DUST, 

with no appreciable loss of time or style, we vote 
him accomplished. So when one is able to 
change the thought that comes to him in his ver- 
nacular into another language without waiting to 
hunt up the word he needs to use, we know that 
his mind acts readily, his thought is nimble. If 
one is specially fond of the study of languages, 
so that all that work is easy for him, he has 
already what he would acquire from such drill. 

As nimbleness is not usually compatible with 
strength and steadiness, one who can translate 
readily may decide that his mind needs a disci- 
pline that will give it the ability for sustained 
effort. That discipline is usually found in math- 
ematical study. 

Not that there is any thing in mental contact 
with numbers that specially stimulates or strength- 
ens the mind, but success in mathematical work 
depends largely upon continuous attention. In 
general study you can continue the mechanical 
effort while your mind is prancing about leagues 
away from the subject in hand. It is difficult to 
detect its erratic movements; but in mathemat- 
ical study, when one is trying to solve a difficult 
problem, if he looks aside from the mark for 
even thirty seconds, the chances are he will have 
to go back and go over all the ground again 
to find the clew he has dropped. He is like one 



THINKING. 49 

drawing up a bucket of water with a rope hand 
over hand. If he lets the rope go for half a mitr 
lite, the bucket will fall and all his labor be 
wasted. 

Study, like that of mathematics, that enables 
one to know whether or not he is holding his 
attention steadily upon the matter before him, 
is the best exercise to give a habit of going 
straight through the mental work in hand. Lord 
Bacon says: " There is no stand or impediment 
in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies. 
If a man's wit be wandering let him study math- 
ematics ; for in demonstrations, if his wit be 
called away never so little, he must begin again ; 
so every defect of mind may have a special 
receipt." 

In the ordinary avocations of life we have lit- 
tle use for any mathematical knowledge beyond 
the simple rules of arithmetic, yet we need in 
every thing the habit of thinking steadily and 
continuously. 

For instance, one is buying a home. He is 
making up his mind upon the merits of a certain 
piece of property. He must consider the econ- 
omy of the purchase, his ability to meet the 
payments, the health of the place, its neighbor- 
hood, schools, society, growth, and a dozen other 
items that are vital to the plan. 

4 



50 DIAMOND DUST. 

Other things being equal, the man or woman 
who can go straight through the details of a busi- 
ness transaction, as he would have to do through 
a difficult mathematical problem to find its solu- 
tion, is the one who can manage his affairs with 
skill and success. The one who lacks this ability 
to think abstractly and consecutively will get his 
attention caught on some pleasant feature of the 
bargain, and will lose sight of a disadvantage 
that the one with whom he is dealing may 
spare no pains to hide. 

In buying even a piece of furniture a woman 
goes through the same mental processes that are 
necessary to the solution of a difficult problem 
in calculus. The main difference is, if she loses 
her way in the problem she knows it at once, 
and goes back to find the path again, but in the 
business of settling the domestic and social details 
of her home she may lose her way in the rea- 
soning and fail of the right conclusions, and not 
know it until her affairs are in a hopeless tangle, 
and an interest of priceless worth has made 
shipwreck. A slight error in nautical calcula- 
tion sent the Atlantic upon the rocks with its 
hundreds of human lives. Many a well-freighted 
home craft has gone down in a sullen sea, be- 
cause the one at the helm failed to think steadily 
and surely through the problem of its management. 



THINKING. 5 1 

In a saloon fray in the canons of Colorado, 
the vital question, which of the ruffians shall go 
out upon his feet and which shall be carried out 
upon a shutter, depends upon the quickness with 
which the muscle of the trigger finger obeys the 
will. We may be sure the men who live that 
desperate life keep themselves well up in pistol 
practice. We come to places where every thing 
depends upon our thought going as swift and 
sure as a minie-ball through the problem of des- 
tiny. There is no time for practice, no room for 
bungling. In an instant the chance has flashed 
by — the doom is sealed. 

The young man who clung to a capsized skiff, 
while the waves of Lake Michigan tossed him 
hither and thither the livelong night, found that 
his life depended upon the reserve power of his 
muscle, his ability to hold on amid the beating 
of the surges where others would have let go and 
sunk in death. 

That friend of mine who held her nerves quiet 
w r hile she cowed a fierce dog with her eye, and 
backed slowly out of his reach, found that every 
thing depended upon her ability to keep all her 
powers in steady action through what seemed 
an age. 

We come to places where not only human 
lives, but the salvation of souls, may hinge upon 



52 DIAMOND DUST. 

our ability to hold ourselves to close, continuous 
attention. To look off for a moment means to 
fail utterly and lose the vital point. Well for us 
if our school mathematics, or some equivalent 
discipline has taught us to hold our thought in a 
given line. 

There is an analogy between physical and men- 
tal hygiene. The body is kept healthy and its 
vigor increased by proper food as well as due ex- 
ercise. It is impossible for the muscle to be 
firm and reliable unless the aliment is strong and 
nutritious. Neither can the mind be vigorous if 
it is fed on trash. 

The racer in the Olympic games held himself 
to the closest diet during his preparatory drill. 
We are in training for mental and spiritual con- 
tests, upon the result of which are hinged the 
interests of eternity. "For we wrestle not 
against flesh and blood, but against principalities, 
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness 
of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high 
places." We must avoid all mental food that 
can impair our powers, for not the olive wreath 
nor the applause of the excited multitude will 
reward our success, but a crown of glory and the 
-Well done" of God. 

What shall be our mental pabulum? Cer- 
tainly not the cheap hash of events that is 



THINKING. S3 

chopped up for us and sensationally seasoned by 
reporters and daily editors. If we desire to learn 
the art of forgetting, and surely the years will 
teach us that, let us cram our minds with what 
we have no wish to carry twenty-four hours. If 
we go through the reports of scandal suits, mur- 
ders, domestic embroglios, and the like, it will 
be well for us if we are able to forget the bulk 
of what we read. There can be very little food 
for the mind in tons of such material. 

Foul air, decaying vegetables, and diseased 
meats fatten for the maw of the pestilence the 
unwashed masses that fester in the alleys and 
dens of great cities. Dime novels and similar 
fulsome, sensual, vile publications poison the 
unthinking people, and fit them to be carried 
off by the pest winds of Mormonism, Spiritism, 
free-lovism, diabolism. 

We will find healthy mental food in history, 
art, science, poetry and, above all, as a staple, 
in God's Book, that fountain and aggregate of all 
truth. We may indulge now then and in a little 
of the best -made fictional sweetmeats, but our 
minds can gain solid strength only from solid 
aliment. 

We will not grow strong by devouring books. 

Seneca said, " Read much, but read few books." 

The mental exercises of some students are sim- 



54 DIAMOND DUST. 

ply mnemonic. Their knowledge is cyclopaedic — 
all in quotation points. Such people are exceed- 
ingly convenient to save the time of thinkers. 
They can give you what you need on demand, 
with no rummaging of books, but when they 
need to put forth a personal intellectual effort, 
they are as weak and helpless as children. We 
are always wondering why they do not amount 
to more, and we conclude that being able to rat- 
tle other men's words from the pen's point or 
tongue's tip, may make a clever quotationist, but 
never a strong, rich thinker. 

We must digest what we eat if we would ap- 
propriate to ourselves its strength. So we must 
make what we read our own by taking it to 
pieces and absorbing its substance. 

To get the -best intellectual strength let us 
learn first our own language, as Lowell calls it — 
"that wonderful composite known as English, 
the best result of the confusion of tongues." It 
is the speech in which we pray and praise, make 
our bargains and win our friends. It is certainly 
of prime importance that we should know the 
use and meaning of its words and phrases and 
sentences, so that when we intend to say one 
thing we may not give utterance to quite another, 
that, though like what we would say, does not 
convey its actual meaning. How much bitter- 



THINKING, 55 

ness and heart-burning, how many quarrels would 
have been saved if they whose vernacular is En- 
glish had so learned their native tongue as to be 
able to speak it intelligibly, saying simply and 
only what they mean. 

How much more thought we could get time 
for, if we were not so busy with trying to find 
the exact meaning of what others have written 
and said. How much more actual Christian 
achievement there would be if the talking folk 
gave us their meaning in plain, exact language. 

It is difficult to understand English without 
a knowledge of the wise, motherly, old Latin 
and also of French and German, for we must 
know that "phonetic decay and dialectic regen- 
eration," as Max Muller would say, have so 
changed the face of many of our words, that we 
can get their exact significance only by going 
back to their early home and associations. 

Linguistic study not only disciplines to readi- 
ness, it enriches and ennobles our thought. As 
the fertility of Egypt depends upon the overflow 
of the Nile, and each inundation leaves an allu- 
vial deposit, so every stream of new thought 
that flows over the mind leaves upon it some- 
thing of its own richness and strength. Whether 
it be the copious, resonant Latin, the imagina- 
tive German, the dignified Spanish, the musical 



56 DIAMOND DUST. 

Italian, the polished Greek, the poetic Hebrew, 
or that wonderful Sanskrit, — a language mas- 
tered adds to the intellectual volume. 

And this is true also of an author. If he 
has the verdict of the thoughtful and far-seeing, 
it will pay to read carefully what he has taken 
pains to write. We must not read along skim- 
mingly, page after page, hoping to come to an 
understanding with him, and get at his meaning 
after a while. Let us read word by word, line 
by line, sentence by sentence, till we are satis- 
fied that we take in the substance of his thought 
as far as we are able to apprehend its force. A 
few pages plodded through in this laborious 
manner, and our fine thinker is conquered. He 
can but tell us what he means to say. 

A certain reading of Dante's "Divina Corn- 
media" will serve to illustrate this point. A 
trio of friends, resting in the woods, took up the 
work of the mighty Italian, and read it in an 
easy, sauntering way, after the day's merry- 
making or study. They usually left the poor 
victims of Dante's punitive genius to boil, or 
broil, and dropped off to sleep in the midst 
of the infernal terrors, with a peaceful sense 
of having done their duty by la creme de la 
creme of polite literature. Neither dared say to 
the others " Dante is certainly stupid, in spite 



THINKING, 57 

of the eulogiums of the critics, and Longfellow's 
translation is wretched English." After a while 
it occurred to them to study this poet of whom 
so many fine things had been written and said. 
Then they found that each line was replete with 
poetic power, each sentence held some figure of 
speech all aglow w T ith the fire of genius. They 
learned wisdom from their foolish w r aste of op- 
portunity. 

If one would go easily through a study, he 
must master its axioms at the outset. My friend 
has been supposed to have special power over 
the scraggy mathematical quantities that are such 
a terror to ordinary students. The secret of her 
success cropped out one day when she told me 
that her mother never permitted her to learn a 
new rule or theorem in arithmetic or algebra, till 
she had wrought some of the examples, study- 
ing out for herself the principle which was in- 
volved, and making for her own understanding 
a formula. 

She learned also from the same wise teacher 
that a few hours of extra time given to the 
first chapters of a book where its principles are 
being laid down, will save days of lumbering, 
crippled attempts to w T ade through its later prob- 
lems. "It is the first step that counts" in more 
senses than one. 



58 DIAMOND DUST. 

Our Hebrew professor holds us for hours upon 
the first paragraphs of the Bible. "Get those 
words perfectly," he says, as he picks them to 
pieces, one by one; "know them in all their rela- 
tions, and you will have passed through the gate 
that admits you to this wonderful revelation of 
God." He tell us that when he was a student in 
the Vatican University in Rome, his father, spend- 
ing a few days with him, noticed a fault in his 
general reading. His grandfather had given him 
a hundred ducats with which to buy books, and 
he was quite proud of his little library. His 
father observed, however, that during the fifteen 
minutes between lecture hours, he glanced over 
the pages of a half dozen books, and before he 
had selected one into which he might dip, the 
time was up, and he had to go back to his pro- 
fessor. When he came from the lecture room, 
his father told him that during the three years 
that he was to remain in the university he could 
be permitted to read nothing but Dante, Pe- 
trarch, Goethe, Shakespeare, and Milton, be- 
cause, if he kept up his studies as he ought, he 
would have only these fragments of time for 
general reading. It would not do for him to 
lose half his time deciding what to read, and the 
other half in getting hold of the thread of the 
author's thought. The writers chosen have an 



THINKING. 59 

idea in every sentence. Their works may be 
opened anywhere, and there is something di- 
rectly under the eye well w T orth the reading. 
They ennoble our minds by holding before them 
the finest imagery, the sublimest soaring of im- 
agination, or the most subtle analysis of human 
character. 

There is a double lesson in this rule of the 
thoughtful father: What we read must be of the 
very best, that that gives a full, rounded idea in 
the fewest words, and so is most provocative of 
thought, and also that we must use to the best 
advantage the odds and ends of time. The 
ordinary way of getting rich is by saving the 
small sums — economy in little expenditures. To 
get much knowledge one must use the scraps of 
time. Any avocation usually makes a demand 
that covers the whole of one's time. If he does 
his work well he has only minutes left for read- 
ing. Now, the one who crowds up to a better 
place where he may have firmer standing-room, 
and a broader outlook, is the one who thinks so 
carefully through the details of his work that he 
can do it more rapidly, and so save a little time ; 
then he uses every moment to push his ability 
toward that to which he aspires. In this way, 
to him that hath more is given. 

Some excuse themselves from reading on the 



60 DIAMOND DUST. 

score of their being pressed with care, driven by 
business. We notice, however, that those same 
overburdened people manage to wade through 
any amount of matter in the daily papers, with 
now and then a cheap story that takes hours for 
the working up of its wonderful matrimonial 
denouement. 

Wesley not only studied philosophy, Biblical 
criticism, and philology on horseback, but he 
wrote excellent works on those subjects. We 
might, any of us, find time for a great deal of 
good reading if we would use the hours that are 
spent in driving to market, going upon visits, 
riding to and from business. We see in the 
street-cars whole rows of women who are gossip- 
ing with eye or tongue upon the cut of chil- 
dren's sacques, the style of ladies' cloaks, etc., 
and tiers of men who are intrenched behind a 
hastily written and badly printed sheet engaged 
upon a more expensive order of gossip, and one 
not always as innocent; but only once in a 
dozen rides do we see one — excepting always 
the students who are driven to use this time to 
keep up with their classes — who is busy upon 
some work that will give scope and breadth and 
grasp of thought. 

Perhaps at most one can give only minutes 
to reading. Then let him read the best. If he 



THINKING. 6 1 

will study with Shakespeare the modes of thought 
and expression, and the life of those old Eliza- 
bethan days, he will find that he has a gallery 
of antiquated English art next door to his shop 
or office, sewing-room or kitchen. If he has 
only ten minutes to spare, instead of gossiping 
with a neighbor about some ephemeral excite- 
ment, some nine days' wonder, or with tout le 
monde through the daily press about some larger 
item of astonishment, he steps into his gallery, 
shuts out the work-a-day world, and laughs or 
cries with the mighty magician over his Portias, 
Desdemonas, and Hamlets. Somehow he finds 
an interpretation of many of the little events of 
life, lifting them out of the commonplace, and 
showing how they bear, like the minor points in 
the plot of a story or play, upon the tremendous 
whole of being. 

Men and women of genius interpret us to 
ourselves. If we listen to them, we may find 
the grand harmony of which even the discords 
are a necessary part. They will certainly give 
us to see through the shallow pretenses of the 
strutting, small people, and we will learn to seek 
the grand, ultimate good, even though it be by 
the way of Gethsemane and Calvary. The rev- 
elations of genius supplement and emphasize 
those of the Book of God. They are the out- 



62 DIAMOND DUST. 

lying fringes of the meanings of the Infinite. 
Though they must never supplant the divine 
teaching, they may help to an apprehension of 
its fullness of thought. 

Our thinking, to be right, must be from the 
right motive. Much fine thinking is in the in- 
terest of selfishness, mammon, sin, and so is all 
wrong. It may move men mightily, but it is 
down the inclined plane toward perdition. Such 
thinkers may be gifted with 

" The art Napoleon 
Of wooing, winning, wielding, fettering, banding 
The hearts of millions till they move as one," 

yet they are doomed to ultimate defeat. God's 
purpose is the only power that moves to sure, 
final victory. 

Emerson says, "Hitch your wagon to a star." 
We would say, rather, Bring your tiny purpose 
into harmony with Him who made and manages 
the stars, and you can not fail of right results. 

That our thinking may be successful, as well 
as right and strong, we must consecrate our 
mental powers to God. 

Some well-meaning people mistake at this 
point. They take the service of God as some- 
thing that is required, and must be gone through, 
like working on the road, or doing military duty; 
or they regard it a somewhat unpleasant neces- 






THINKING, 63 

sity, like carrying a life insurance, to guard 
against a possible exigency. They mean to 
escape hell and get to heaven, but they intend 
to have money, place, and power on the way. 

Now-, let them devote their mental ability to 
the service of Him who claims all, and they will 
find that the primal use of consecrated thinking is 
the working out of a clearly cut crystalline 
character. 

Others, who recognize more fully the Lord's 
right to the best of the life, mistake in this: 
they regard religion as an affair of the emotions, 
and having very little to do with the intellect. 

They watch their sensibilities as carefully as 
a physician notes the symptoms of his patient. 
They keep diaries in which they note just how 
they felt at such a time, and under such and 
such circumstances, as if the condition of the 
feelings were a sure exponent of the state of 
grace. 

Conspicuous among those who live by senti- 
ment rather than by faith (which is another 
name for religious common sense) are the old 
Romish saints and recluses, who regarded pious 
meditations and introspection the sum of relig- 
ious duty. They kept that most subtle and 
variable and uncertain part of the nature, the 
emotional, forever under the microscope. No 



64 DIAMOND DUST. 

wonder that they grew morbid and erratic, see- 
ing visions and dreaming dreams. 

It would have saved a deal of trouble if they 
had given their logic a chance to straighten out 
their spiritual kinks. And there are not wanting 
among Protestants those who are quite as foolish. 
There are consecrated men and women who are 
ready to pray and praise indefinitely, and to do 
any thing that will give a good, active tone to 
their feelings^ but who seem to think it cold and 
heartless to pay any attention to the spiritual 
use of the intellect. They believe as surely 
as do Romanists that ignorance is the mother 
of devotion. They feel their way through the 
adjustment of their relations to God and men 
instead of permitting their reason to bear a 
proper part in the work. They bring their 
emotions to the happiest condition, but leave 
their power to think upon the tremendous ques- 
tions pertaining to the spiritual life all unused 
and weedy, like a fallow field. The result is a 
character, one-sided, weak, superstitious, bigoted, 
liable at any hour to be warped out of all form 
and comeliness by the archenemy, and always 
unfit for the heaviest, strongest work. 

As soon as one has attained a completeness 
of consecration that sets him entirely at rest 
about his own spiritual condition, he begins to 



THINKING. 65 

obey the leadings of the Holy Spirit in caring 
for the souls of others. And just here there is 
the greatest need of sure, steady thinking. No 
work is more worthy of the best intellectual 
vigor than the work of God. In any thing else 
we may better be mechanical and blundering 
than in this, the most vital. 

In every department of God's work there is 
need of a re-enforcement of strong, sure thinking. 
Many a good cause suffers, and some perish, for 
the lack of good management. That sad utter- 
ance of the Savior sounds like a dirge above the 
wrecks of good enterprises that lie along the 
path of the years, "The children of this world 
are wiser in their generation than the children 
of light." Diplomatists, politicians, business 
men study directness, polish, nice address, every 
art that has power over mind, to help them 
carry out their schemes, while the Lord's work- 
ers blunder through their duties in any sort 
of way. 

We need to think more carefully how to lead 
others to the Savior. We will learn more for that 
work in the study of human mind, than in all 
good books. 

We must not stumble in upon people, re- 
gardless of their modes of thought and action. 
We can not force a way into their territory just 

S 



66 DIAMOND DUST. 

where we please to demand entrance. Every 
one has beaten routes through his spiritual do- 
main — the tramways over which he carries his 
exports and imports. We must strike into them 
with our artillery and supply-trains, if we would 
conquer him for God. Some people have faith- 
force enough to construct military roads wherever 
they choose to go, yet we can not help thinking 
that the same zeal would accomplish infinitely 
more if the laws of mind were regarded. 

For instance, see how cautiously a man "ap- 
proaches" you, if he wants to insure your life. 
No rhetorician was ever more careful to assure 
an audience of his good principle, good sense, 
and good-will. If he began and carried his work 
as abruptly and unbendingly as some Christians 
set about leading a soul to the Redeemer, he 
would die in the poor-house. 

There is a world of unnecessary lumber block- 
ing up the way to the cross. Penitents are 
dragged through it by the force of conviction 
and the faith of the Church. When they find 
themselves rejoicing within the "wicket gate," 
hardly one in ten can tell by what process he 
reached that point. How much better it would 
be if seekers of Christ's salvation could be so 
instructed in regard to the way of faith as to 
know the principles that underlie the new life, 



THINKING. 67 

being shown them as they take the steps by 
which it is made possible for God to change their 
relation to himself. They would then be like 
sailors who know something about the managing 
of a ship before they go to sea. When the 
storms of temptation strike them, they would 
know how to keep steadily on their course. 

The newly converted ought to be cared for a 
great deal more thoughtfully than they are under 
the present regime. They are usually left to 
themselves when their names are fairly on the 
Church record. They need more help than ever 
when they really set about establishing a new 
character, and begin to understand how much 
there is to overcome. The Church is exceed- 
ingly remiss in this matter. 

As if one should gather up fifty or a hun- 
dred little orphans and range them in rows of 
cribs with a table well furnished with meats and 
vegetables before each, and then lock them in 
and go on his way, rejoicing over his wonderful 
orphan house, and the grand men and women 
that were to be the outgrowth of his scheme; 
the ordinary methods of caring for Christ's little 
ones are not much less absurd. No wonder 
that such numbers are weak and sickly, and so 
many die. 

Suppose some Sabbath day one should sue- 



68 DIAMOND DUST. 

ceed in getting a dozen drunkards to take the 
pledge; then he should leave them — making 
no effort to help them find employment, better 
associations, and decent homes. They may go 
back to their old haunts among the whisky 
stenches, and fight the devils single handed till 
they shall chance to hear again the eloquence 
that roused them to a sense of danger. A 
thousand wonders if every one of them is not 
back again in the ditch by Saturday night. 

We ought to use our very best thought 
upon this work of helping to assured, estab- 
lished Christian life the "babes" of Christ's 
household. If we know one of them to be 
staggering under temptation, we ought to take 
up his case as we would a difficult problem, one 
upon which were pending tremendous issues. 
If need be, we should spend hours in close, 
prayerful study, measure his infirmities, his pe- 
culiarities; think how he could be reached, how 
held. Trusting the Savior's help, ten to one, we 
could get him again out of Satan's clutches. 
If, through our lack of care, he is permitted to 
go back to his sins, his state will be infinitely 
worse than at first, for he will take to himself 
seven other spirits more wicked than himself. 
Thought given to this work pays abundantly. 
Did not the salvation of souls cost Christ his 



THINKING. 69 

life? Heaven is eternal growth and glory, hell 
a fathomless horror. 

Family religion gives ample scope for the 
best thinking. Family piety is one of the most 
potent agencies for the perpetuity of the Chris- 
tian Church, yet how little do good people 
understand and use its power. In many fam- 
ilies religious instruction is left altogether to the 
Sunday-school teacher and the pastor. If, from 
force of habit, the parents take the duties that 
belong to the heads of families, recognizing 
God at the table, and worshiping him once or 
twice a day as a household, it is in such a me- 
chanical, meaningless way, that it were better 
left undone. A long chapter with never a ques- 
tion or a word of explanation or illustration, 
and a longer prayer. Little feet fidget upon 
chair rounds till they are nervous enough to 
fly in spite of the most dignified propriety, 
Big boys and girls rebel. The father scolds 
and tightens the rein for awhile, and ends in 
letting them do as they please. The mother 
protests in a meek way, and comforts herself 
with a determination to ask prayers for them, 
and to get the minister to come and talk to 
them, hoping that they will be ' ' converted this 
Winter." Oh, what blunders! The power of 
music untried, the teaching of Scriptural truth 



70 DIAMOND DUST. 

with note and anecdote — giving Hebrew eyes 
with which to see into this wonderful Hebrew 
Book, that alone contains the way of salva- 
tion — all warm, genial, earnest means of home 
grace unused, and the children growing up to 
vote "prayers" an unmitigated bore, and the 
Bible the most stupid of books — driven to hate 
the faith of their fathers by the cold, formal 
attempts at family worship. How unlike God's 
plan for home piety and instruction. 

11 Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one 
Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy might. And these words, which I 
command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 
and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy 
children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest 
in thine house, and when thou walkest by the 
way, and when thou liest down, and when thou 
risest up." Even with this divine injunction as 
a model, there is need of the closest, strongest 
thinking, if one would train his family to earnest 
religious life. 

Sabbath-school workers need to bring to their 
most important work well-disciplined, consecrated 
thought. In our public - schools, teaching is 
studied most carefully. Hours are given each 
week by each teacher to learning the best 



THINKING. 7 1 

methods of imparting instruction. It is not 
enough that one is thoroughly versed in the 
study, she must know the best way of drawing 
out the young mind, and bringing it to exercise 
its powers upon the text-book in hand. She 
must understand how, with object lessons, pic- 
tures, blackboards, to make truth simple and 
tangible. 

Sabbath-school teaching has undergone a 
change for the better, and yet it is only the 
specialists, the pioneer thinkers, who bring the 
same acumen to this work that is so useful in 
the public-schools. Their modes, that seem so 
wonderful by contrast with the old, humdrum 
ways of Bible teaching, do not come from the 
intuitions of genius, nor from a religious ecstasy. 
The love of Christ constrains them to put forth 
effort, common sense holds them to close 
thought, and thus they work out the plans that 
make the world-wide changes in Sunday-school 
teaching, just as thinking wrought Robert Ful- 
ton's crude notions of steam navigation into the 
Great Eastern — a floating city. Any one who 
knows enough to be intrusted with the care of a 
school or a class may accomplish similar results 
if he will give time and earnest, prayerful study 
to this question: "How can I give my scholars 
the most Biblical truth in the least time?" 



72 DIAMOND DUST. 

Of all people Christian pastors have the greatest 
need of strong, steady thinking. There is room 
for improvement in every department of their 
labor, Take the prayer-meeting, for instance. 
Its outer mechanism is generally left to adjust 
itself. The shallow and bold are often allowed 
to crowd out the talented and timid. The 
prayers may be as long and mechanical, the 
hymns as wretchedly sung and tedious, the ex- 
hortations as prosy and tiresome as dullness and 
formality could desire. One needs a good de- 
gree of piety to carry him safely through some 
Church prayer-meetings week after week. 

The young and moderately religious, the very 
ones who most need such means of grace, will 
not go, and there is no use in scolding. The 
only thing is to set about making the meetings 
better. They can be made as attractive as a 
social gathering, if one will take pains to pray 
and think out a plan for their proper manage- 
ment. The people hunger for spiritual food. 
There will be no trouble about the attendance 
upon the social meetings of the Church, if they 
are conducted in a sensible manner, and with 
the presence and help of the Holy Spirit. 

Some ministers run in deeply worn grooves, 
round and round, year in and year out, doing 
exactly as they did a quarter of a century ago, 



THINKING. 73 

though mechanics, art, science, teaching, every 
thing is constantly advancing. 

As one of many points in which Church 
management is a failure for lack of sure, definite 
thought and purpose, we can but notice the sing- 
ing. It has been proved in these latter days 
that more truth can be sung into the hearts of 
the people than they will take from sermon or 
exhortation. Yet, with all its power for good, 
Church singing is often useless if not positively 
harmful. It is left to shamble along subject to 
the caprice or vanity of thoughtless, irreverent 
people. Worship is suspended while the choir 
sings. If its antics are not amusing, they are 
immeasurably tedious. And this is not because 
singers are more troublesome or less manageable 
than other people. They are quite like others in 
doing a thing as it pleases them, when they are 
left to choose their own mode. 

To remedy this mischief random shots from 
the pulpit will hardly answer in place of well-ma- 
tured plans, upon which kind, common sense can 
bring all parties to agree. 

In selecting the officiary of the Church the 
most careful thought is necessary. It would be 
a saving of time and strength to think and plan 
a whole day over filling an important office, 
rather than to let the matter drift, and then have 



74 DIAMOND DUST. 

to manage an unruly incumbent, or piece out 
one that is inefficient. 

Any Christian to whom the Lord has intrusted 
a responsibility in his work ought to think what 
is the most possible to be accomplished in that 
line, and how the best can be done for the cause 
he is set to serve. With his power to think con- 
secrated to Christ, " leaning not to his own un- 
derstanding," but trusting for divine guidance and 
wisdom, let him study his material and arrange 
and dispose of it to the best advantage, mak- 
ing the very most possible of every opportunity, 
be it small or great. Then having done all, let 
him trust for the blessing of God without which 
nothing can succeed. 

Some who come to understand that their fail- 
ure in Christian work is owing to a lack of con- 
secrated thinking, hope for a better life some 
time,, but they do not comprehend their own re- 
sponsibility in the matter, and the need that they 
bring themselves to a broader efficiency. They 
wait for God to send upon them an immense 
passional force that shall bear them up to a 
higher plane, suddenly changing the life to what 
it ought to be. They forgot that all human 
character is hinged upon human effort, that God 
supplies the grace and demands that we use it, 
we determining by our choice the direction and 



THINKING. 75 

the extent of the divine work. Otherwise, the 
Lord, and not we ourselves, would be responsi- 
ble for our condition. 

True Christian passivity is intensely active, and 
while we meet his requirement God never fails to 
do his part. When one chooses that all his life 
shall be used in Christ's service, he will find that 
God works in him to will and to do of his own 
good pleasure. He will prove ultimately that 
the powers he was at such pains to wrench from 
their old selfish bias and turn toward God are 
by the Divine Father developed to their best 
strength. The Savior makes infinitively more of 
him than he could make of himself; and thus is 
demonstrated that word of the Master, " He that 
will lose his life for my sake shall save it." 

Each talent given into the Redeemer's hand 
is by his power and providence brought to its 
best polish and strength and put to the very 
best use. 

The Lord of the service sees to it that no 
work done with a brave, single-eyed purpose for 
himself shall fail of result. His word must ac- 
complish that whereunto he hath sent it. 

The scattered thought may lie for a thousand 
years like the grains of wheat in the mummy's 
hand, yet if it has in it the vitality of God's 
truth, it must spring up when the hour comes for 



76 DIAMOND DUST. 

it to have light and warmth and room, bearing 
a plenteous harvest of good. 

Let Christian thought be thoroughly cultured 
and completely consecrated to the divine service, 
and the time will not be far distant when the 
Church shall move forth, " bright as the sun, fair 
as the moon, and terrible as an army with 
banners." 

Then will dawn the golden day of peace, when 

' 'The last man shall stand God-conquered, 
With his face to heaven upturned." 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 77 



CONSECRATED thinking may yet master 
all problems of destiny. 

Thought has already wrought marvels in the 
material world. Phenomena that used to set 
men shivering and cowering because they were 
believed to be the work of demons, have been 
found to be only the result of natural law. 

In the older, more ignorant days, if an eclipse 
darkened the sun, or a tornado slipped its leash, 
or an earthquake moved forth in deadly might, 
the scared people imagined that dragons were 
devouring the worlds. 

In this braver time science springs into the 
path of ruin wrought by the cataclysm, gathers 
its facts, finds its law, and guards against its 
return. 

In the thinker's laboratory has been wrought 
out the wondrous mechanism that whispers from 
continent to continent, that makes patient draft- 
horses of fire and flood, that thrusts famine and 
pestilence and war back to their dens. In that 



78 DIAMOND DUST, 

same laboratory, by God's blessing, must order 
and well-being be evolved from the moral chaos. 

As the problem of bringing erratic physical 
forces into harmonious action has lost much of 
its ruggedness and difficulty, so the inscrutable 
ethical questions that have loomed so hope- 
lessly in the path of all who have wrought for 
the world's bettering, are giving way before ear- 
nest thinking, patient toiling, and steady faith 
for divine aid. 

Evils that seemed as inscrutable and inexor- 
able as destiny, grinding to powder the heart 
and hope of millions, have been analyzed by 
philosophic thought. The mischievous principle 
has been discovered and its elimination made 
possible. 

In reformatory, as well as in mechanical en- 
deavor, thinkers have stumbled over the sim- 
plicity of the right formula. 

The old Greeks, of whom Plotinus said, 
"They used to get out of their bodies to think," 
wrought their best upon the questions of moral 
renovation. They move our pity — those men of 
peerless intellect standing, as Dante saw them 
in his dream, "with calm, slow eyes" fixed on 
the unyielding problem. They failed always in 
their studies of art, letters, and law touching the 
moral and social life. They fumbled in vain for 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 79 

the mainspring of the regenerated civilization. 
It is revealed by Christianity alone. It is noth- 
ing more and nothing less than honor and integ- 
rity in the liouies of the people. 

Aristotle was within touch of the secret. He 
declared the family to be the type of the state, 
thus almost guessing its tremendous import. If 
the mighty Stagyrite had taken another step and 
taught that the purity of the family is the power 
of the state, if he had found the divine method 
of cleansing that fountain of social activities, 
making clean the homes of the race, and if his 
dicta had been accepted in morals, as in logic, 
the gloomiest, bloodiest pages of history would 
have been spared. 

Pliny said there would be no state if there 
were no family ; an utterance that touches like the 
flicker of a taper the dense darkness that en- 
shrouded his magnificent Rome. 

Wolsey says that Rome rose by the sanctity 
of the family life and fell when that sanctity was 
undermined. 

In the purifying of the home sanctuary is 
found the solution of that problem of the ages — 
the bringing into right lines of the immense eth- 
ical forces that have run riot, working such hope- 
less, reckless ruin, such boundless wrong and 
outrage. 



80 DIAMOND DUST. 

The family can not be pure unless it is per- 
manent, and its permanence depends upon the 
permanence of marriage. 

Christianity alone makes provision for the per- 
manence of marriage, because of all religions it 
alone teaches the inherent dignity of humanity > 
and the sacredness of inalienable human rights. 

Marriage is of God. Jehovah united the first 
pair. He put to sleep his masterpiece, the won- 
derful complex being he had made in his own 
image, and wakened them to the happiness of 
shared work and joy; as if he had made tangi- 
ble the gentler and more enduring part of human 
nature, clothing it in separate flesh that it might 
stand forth helping and helped, bone of man's 
bones, life of his life. 

In the writings of the great apostle we find 
an amplification of the divine idea. "He that 
loveth his wife loveth himself; for no man ever 
yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cher- 
isheth it, even as the Lord the Church." 

The Gospel rule of domestic life is above crit- 
icism. "Husbands, love your wives even as 
Christ also loved the Church and gave himself 
for it. So ought men to love their wives as their 
own bodies. For this cause shall a man leave 
his father and mother and shall be joined unto 
his, wife, and th<fy two shall be one flesh. 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 8 1 

Let every one of you in particular so love his 
wife even as himself, and the wife see that she 
reverence her husband." 

In all lands where the Bible has Httle or no 
power, the permanence and purity of the home 
are hardly known. Wherever Jehovah's will is 
not recognized as law, the marriage tie is a mere 
financial adjustment; men and women join them- 
selves to each other from impulse ; and separate 
by caprice. 

No doubt there is a constant infringement of 
the husband's claim to reverence and love. 
Probably he is cheated out of all those delicate, 
refining attentions that go to make the best of 
life — that that we live when the public eye is not 
upon us, and we are simply and only ourselves. 
Yet, as the condition of the woman is the more 
gross and appreciable exponent of the wrong, 
of that we usually speak. 

Among pagans the zvife is bought and sold — 
the slave of man's lust or of his greed. Men 
hold themselves above moral restraint, and re- 
gard women as existing simply for their service 
and comfort. 

Among the Greeks and Romans, even when 
those peoples were at their best, the woman 
might not have a thought above her distaff. 
She was the true woman who waited only upon 

6 



82 DIAMOND DUST 

the pleasure of her lord, holding her love sacred 
to him, living or dead, as did Penelope while the 
vagrant Ulysses wandered, heart and foot, at his 
own sweet will. 

Csesar's wife must be above suspicion, though 
the private morals of that same Caesar, "the 
foremost man of all the world," were too scan- 
dalous for record. A married woman must sac- 
rifice herself in utter disconsolateness at her hus- 
band's death, though he had given a dozen other 
women a full share of his love. 

Christianity alone gives a woman the right to 
demand honor for honor, purity for purity. 

Only the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ 
places the woman, where Margaret Fuller said 
she must stand to give her hand with dignity, 
"fairly upon her feet." You look in vain 
among the golden thoughts of the "Divine 
Plato" for one syllable that helps a woman to- 
ward the starting-point that the Hebrew Bible 
gave her — "a helpmeet for man." 

When Socrates w r as turning his steady eyes 
upon death, and giving forth some of the finest 
utterances that ever fell from his lips, in that 
supreme hour when his heart ought to have been 
most tender, he turned from his weeping wife 
with a contemptuous fling at the weakness and 
silliness of women. 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 83 

Hebrew women towered like desert palms 
above those of the heathen nations by whom 
they were surrounded — Sarah, empress-like in her 
beauty and strength; Rachel, whose life was so 
pure it stood the test of a seven years' courtship, 
"and it seemed to Jacob but a few days for the 
love he had for her;" Miriam, who made the 
songs of her people while her brothers were 
getting its laws from God; Jael, who delivered 
her nation by killing the generalissimo of the 
enemy's forces; Deborah, who administered law 
and led armies ; Esther, the beautiful diplomate, 
who saved her race from the impending doom. 
Solomon, that pioneer of Jewish literati, gives us 
the Biblical model of feminine character. The 
picture is drawn with Rembrandt strokes. Com- 
pare it with those in the Vedas and Shasters. 
They teach that a woman is inherently vile. 
She was so bad a man in some past statt of 
existence that she has been born a woman as a 
punishment. 

The books of all non-Christian writers abound 
in proverbs about the intrinsic and hopeless de- 
pravity of woman. The Hebrew philosopher 
shows his belief in the opposite. He speaks of 
the virtuous woman as if she were not only a 
possible idea, but an actual person. He sketches 
from life. She is industrious. "She seeketh 



84 DIAMOND DUST. 

wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her 
hands. " "She riseth while it is yet night and 
giveth meat to her household, and a portion to 
her maidens." 

She is a business woman. "She maketh fine 
linen and selleth it. She delivereth girdles to 
the merchant. She perceiveth that her mer- 
chandise is good." 

She understands the laws that underlie the 
rise and fall of real estate, for "she considereth 
a field and buyeth it." 

She is any thing but feeble-minded, for 
"strength and honor are her clothing." 

Sh»? knows something and can tell it in a 
wise way, for "she openeth her mouth with 
wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of 
kindness." 

She is benevolent. "She stretcheth out her 
hands to the poor; yea, she reacheth out her 
hands to the needy." 

She cares personally for the comfort of a 
well-managed home. "She looketh well to the 
way of her household." 

She has a happy family life. "Her children 
arise up and call her blessed; her husband, also, 
and he praiseth her." 

Her piety is the crowning glory of her life. 
"Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but the 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 85 

woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be 
praised." 

The degenerate Judaism of Christ's time 
had swung far enough away from the divine 
ideal. Its rabbis said, "He is a fool that at- 
tempts the religious instruction of a woman;" 
and "Let the words of the law be burned rather 
than given to a woman." 

Paul, whose utterances on this subject have 
been wrested by the unlearned and unstable to 
the destruction of thousands of souls, — Paul gives 
an epitome of his belief in this sentence: "There 
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond 
nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye 
are all one in Christ Jesus." When the Chris- 
tian Church cuts down through gloss and preju- 
dice to the core of the meaning of that utter- 
ance we may look for the millennium. 

The retrograde Christianity of the dark ages 
shut woman out of the world of sober thought 
and earnest endeavor, making her a drudge, or, 
at her best estate, a dainty plaything, on account 
of whose personal charms daft wights should 
write wretched rhymes, or doughty knights 
break each other's skulls. 

In the sixteenth century Francoise de Sain- 
toigne attempted to establish primary schools for 
girls. She was hooted in the streets of Paris, 



86 DIAMOND DUST. 

and her father called in four doctors learned in 
the law to sit in solemn conclave upon her terri- 
ble heresy, and decide whether or not the mis- 
guided woman were possessed with devils, 
prompting her unheard of and dangerous scheme 
of teaching girls to read! 

In the eighteenth century Dean Swift wrote 
his "Letter to a young lady on her marriage*' — 
a piece of literature which was received without 
dissent as an excellent bit of advice to a young 
gentlewoman. He says "It is a little hard that 
not one gentlemen's daughter in a thousand 
should be brought to read or understand her 
own natural tongue. But it is no wonder when 
they are not so much as taught to spell in their 
childhood, nor can they ever attain to it in their 
whole lives. I know very well that those who 
are commonly called learned women have lost 
all manner of credit by their impertinent talka- 
tiveness. But there is an easy remedy for this 
if you once consider, after all the pains you may 
be at, you never can arrive in point of learning 
to the perfection of a school-boy. Your sex 
give more thought and application to be fools 
than to be wise and useful. When I reflect on 
this, I can not conceive you to be human crea- 
tures, but a certain sort of species hardly above 
a monkey, who has more diverting tricks than 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 87 

any of you, is an animal less mischievous and 
expensive, might, in time, be a tolerable critic in 
velvet and brocade, and for aught I know would 
equally become them." 

Phidias said of his statue of Minerva, " Give 
it the light of the public square." In giving this 
question the light of the centuries we find that 
in no land or time in all this sorrowful world 
has there ever been hope or heart for women 
except as the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ 
has borne sway. Women never had and never 
can have a firmer, better friend than the Son of 
Mary. Of all systems of philosophic and relig- 
ious thought none has given her the place ac- 
corded to her by Protestant Christianity. They 
who strike at the Church because some of its lim- 
itations are faulty and irksome, are like the An- 
cient Mariner who shot the albatross. They will 
bring down upon themselves a doom more bitter 
than death, that of the abominable old sensualisms. 

The Bible is woman's Magna Charta, and it 
is worse than suicide for her to set aside its pure, 
high truths. 

Marriage is a Biblical institution. The home 
is found only in Christian lands. Without Scrip- 
tural guards a woman's life is poor and petty and 
pitiful enough. The woman who has sufficient 
moral dignity to desire to be nobly and truly her- 



88 DIAMOND DUST. 

self, and enough insight to see where the danger 
lies, must cherish Christianity as she would her 
own life — nay, her own soul. 

While the permanence of marriage may be 
nullified by the degradation of women, it is at- 
tacked no less fatefully from another quarter. 

Before the abolition of slavery a southern 
lady wrote : ' ' We women of the South are 
merely the heads of harems." It was a fearful 
thing for slave-women to be at the mercy of the 
lust of their masters. It was a no less fearful 
thing for the civilization and the home that the 
masters were thus rendered liable to a devel- 
opment of the low, the sensual, the animal. 
Thoughtful, Christian people in the South saw 
with the utmost pain the danger to free institutions 
from this terrible maladjustment. Where the mis- 
chief was allowed to enter a household the har- 
mony and confidence necessary to a happy home 
were at an end. It did not need the genius of a 
Fanny Kemble for a woman to understand the 
cheat of giving her whole self to a man, while 
he divided his love between a legal family and 
two or three others not recognized by law. 

Thus servitude avenges itself. The very pres- 
ence of a subject class leads to a most harmful 
development of character in those for whose com- 
fort the lower are deprived of natural rights. As 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 89 

"mercy blesseth him that gives and him that 
takes," so domestic wrongs curse the doer as 
heavily as the immediate sufferer therefrom. 

Pagan men have proved this by the utter loss 
of all the " small, sweet courtesies," the tender, 
beautiful, bracing home atmosphere from which 
a man goes forth to face the rough, bad world, 
inarmored, invulnerable as Achilles was when his 
mother dipped him in the Styx. 

Whoever holds another from a God-given 
right is guilty, not only of a crime against his 
victim, he sins most egregiously against himself. 
If he uses the power given him in his own do- 
mestic circle to perpetrate an injury that he 
would by no means endure from another, his sin 
is suicidal. He may be as handsome as a Turk, 
as proud as a Spanish grandee, as gifted as Lord 
Byron, as superbly selfish as Napoleon, yet he is 
stabbing to the heart the purity of his manhood, 
the integrity of his moral nature, and rendering 
impossible the best that this life can give him, 
the permanence and excellence of marriage and 
a home. 

The mischief wrought in domestic life by 

pride and passion does not stop with destroying 

the dignity of marriage. It is felt throughout 

the community and the state. The vanity and 

insolence developed by being allowed to lord it 



90 DIAMOND DUST. 

over others, can but result in civil and national 
broils, brawls, and wars. The man who is accus- 
tomed to have his way, whether it be reasonable 
or sottish, is not likely to have himself well in 
hand in a diplomatic encounter. A government 
in the hands of such statesmen is in danger of 
constant entanglements and embroglios. The 
man who does not respect the rights of those 
upon whom he can trample with impunity can 
not be trusted to legislate upon the destinies of 
thousands who are at his mercy. In proof of 
this turn to those pages of history that record 
the growth and decay of that magnificent Persia, 
of the Roman Empire, of the Saracenic domina- 
tion, of the rich old East Indian civilization. 
Self-government is at the base of ability to gov- 
ern others. 

It was not a mere accident that the apostle 
enjoined domestic purity and integrity upon the 
men who were to hold office in the Church, over- 
seeing her interests and shaping her polity. "A 
bishop then must be blameless, the husband of 
one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given 
to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, 
no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre ; but patient, 
not a brawler, not covetous ; one that ruleth his 
own house, having his children in subjection with 
all gravity (for if a man know not how to rule 



MARRIED PEOPLE, 9 1 

his own house, how shall he take care of the 
Church of God)." Before he can rule others he 
must learn to hold a tight rein upon his own 
passions. They who are accustomed, in little 
matters, and when free from outside restraint, to 
respect fully the individuality and all personal 
rights of others, can hardly fail of probity in 
public affairs. 

Plenty of nonsense has been uttered and 
written upon the equality and inequality of the 
sexes. Probably a logical adjustment of this 
question is impossible, as it is based upon the 
comparison of things that may not be compared. 
As w r ell may we attempt to measure mathemati- 
cally the difference between color and sound, the 
fragrance of roses and the sheen of stars or 
other incompatible conditions. 

If women reverence their husbands as the 
Scriptures enjoin, and men love their wives as 
Christ loved the Church, each will second the 
efforts of the other to make the most of any 
special gifts that may help the general good. 
The wife will not say, "It is for my personal 
comfort to have you devote yourself to money- 
making, so you must thrust aside that artistic or 
intellectual or benevolent ability that seems to 
dominate your character. You must not write 
or paint or preach as you believe you ought to 



92 DIAMOND DUST. 

do. You must make money to keep me and 
my children in ease and elegance." 

The result of a domestic council upon the 
case may bring out the fact that, while he has 
the soul of sensibility, the fervor of spirit that 
might make him abundantly helpful as a moral 
leader, he lacks the practical ability that gets 
one comfortably ready for pay-day— an ability 
that, for some wise purpose, she has in full 
measure. Then she will take the commissary 
department while he devotes himself to the work 
for which he was especially intended. 

On the other hand, he will not say, "These 
buttons must be kept securely sewed on, though 
your poem be never written, though your book 
wither and die in your brain, your benevolent 
scheme never find opportunity or use. Ten 
thousand souls whom your voice ought to warn 
of the wrath to come may stumble on in dark- 
ness to death, rather than that my coffee should 
lack the amber clearness your talent might give 
it, or my dinner the epicurean relish that your 
abundant energy might plan for my comfort. " 

The true equality, that of the Golden Rule, is 
not so very difficult to attain when Christ's Gos- 
pel has a chance at the lives of men and women. 
Under that principle, marriage is to neither a 
sacrifice, but a girding of the surest strength. 



MARRIED PEOPLE, 93 

The home will stand pure and strong and glori- 
ous, the very bulwark of the civilization and of 
godliness. 

Marriage is usually necessary to roundness 
and completeness of character. Each life needs 
another to which it may be joined by an un- 
breakable bond supplementing its lack by add- 
ing the quality or grace in which it is deficient. 
The timid man or woman must be united to the 
courageous, the brusque to the gentle. Joined, 
they make a completed life, each doing the bet- 
ter work for the influence of the other, each 
working freely to the law of his or her being, 
each following the will of God and working to 
his purpose. 

There may be those to whom it is given to 
remain single for the sake of special personal 
responsibility with which marriage could but in- 
terfere seriously, but there can hardly be a more 
harmful fallacy than that marriage is opposed to 
holiness, and that they who would be specially 
devoted to God's work must keep themselves 
aloof from its entanglements. The Romish 
Church has committed its religious services to 
an army of celibates. It, is, consequently a 
strong political and militant organization, but, 
in meeting the spiritual needs of its communi- 
cants, it is an utter failure. Better a thousand 



94 DIAMOND DUST. 

times that its host of ghostly old maids and 
bachelors follow the example of the monk Mar- 
tin, when he gave the sweet little nun, Katie 
Von Bora, a legal right to fill with rest and sun- 
shine the stronghold where he retreated when 
hard pressed by the outside conflict, teaching 
thus by example as well as by precept how to 
do that most godly thing, the making of a pure, 
noble home. 

There are also w r idowed hearts whose love 
lies in the dust of the sepulcher, and who ad- 
just themselves to their loss as one does who 
has parted with an arm. Possibly marriage bells 
never chimed for them, but their hearts know 
the rest that comes only from the joining of two 
lives that are " meant for each other/' 

Marriage adds to the moral strength, instead 
of lessening it, but that this may be so neither 
must claim dictatorship. Each must respect in 
the other the ultimate supremacy and responsi- 
bility of the soul's choice. 

But how seldom do we see wrought out this 
divine ideal. How wretchedly have sin and 
selfishness wrenched out of all form and comeli- 
ness this good intention of the kind God ; and 
what worlds of mischief grow out of the sad 
mistake ! 

Multitudes are fastened together for conven- 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 95 

ience or pride, by diplomacy or avarice, really 
living, as blunt old Dr. Clarke has it, in ' ' legal- 
ized adultery." 

Many others who seemed at first well mated 
have grown into such coldness toward each 
other, w T e can but conclude they would be glad 
to be free. We can almost tell the number of 
their married years by the distance between 
them — husband and wife. What a disappoint- 
ment! Instead of the expected paradise, only a 
desert of indifference ! They are obliged to 
speak across this waste, arranging monetary 
matters. Now and then they catch a glimps of 
each other as they kneel side by side in the 
worship of God. The Lord winds the love of 
little children around their hearts to draw them 
together. Their tears mingle beside dying beds. 
They clasp hands by little graves, where seems 
to be buried the heart of each. Yet, in spite of 
all, they drift further and further apart — he mar- 
ried to his business or his ambition ; she, to her 
babies, her housekeeping, or society. All those 
kindly glances, those touches of hand and lip, 
those gentle, loving attentions that were to have 
been the dessert of each day's fare, are forgotten 
or laughed at as school-boy poetry, or, like 
faded flowers from coffin lids, they are sighed 
over in secret. The twain grow old and die, 



g6 DIAMOND DUST. 

utter strangers to each other's real life, alto- 
gether unaware of the strength and happiness 
they have missed by not living and loving as 
married people ought to do. 

But this negative, this starving, is not the 
tvorst side of the mischief. The positive danger 
is far greater. Satan is not slow to bring in a 
brood of lawless loves to poison and destroy the 
hungry heart. If the affections of one wander 
wickedly sometimes the other is to blame. One 
is careless of the domestic bond because the 
other is selfish or cold, heartless or hateful. 

Great harm comes to the children who are 
born into such families. When the household 
loves are frost-bitten, no brown-stone elegance can 
supply the lack of heart-warmth. From those 
frigid mausoleums daughters hurry off to find 
elsewhere what they have missed at home, and 
sons are easily lured into the by-ways of Hell ! 
The children of such families not unfrequently 
grow up in doubt of the possibility of home- 
happiness, and conclude to repeat their parents' 
blunder, and settle into domestic mummies — 
their only relief, a costly embalming ! 

Married people can ill afford to freeze each 
other and ruin their children by their bickerings. 
Each icicle that falls between them, like the 
dragons' teeth sown by Cadmus, will spring up 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 97 

a hateful, malignant spoiler. It is so much easier 
to indulge a captious, petulant spirit than to hold 
it in check. People neglect those little foxes, 
surliness, snappishness, fault-finding, till they 
have spoiled all the vines. Such parents may 
help their children to good social position. They 
may will them a few paltry dollars, but they rob 
them of what is worth more than millions, the 
kindliness, the sweet memories, the culturing in- 
fluence of true home love. 

Let us find some of the reasons why so many 
married people fail of happiness. In the outset 
we may note a fault ir> the preliminaries. Mar- 
ried life is held constantly before young people, 
not in its own plain, beautiful, common sense 
simplicity, but tricked out with all manner of 
moonshiny sentimentalisms, and unreal fancies. 
The subject of getting married makes the staple 
of their jests, the main part of their merriment. 
Their amusements are planned with this thought 
uppermost. Their confidences are largely made 
up of the telling of love affairs. Their books 
outside of the school-room teach little else. 
What was that your boy hid under his pillow? 
A love story. And little need is there of hiding 
that sort of literature these days when even Sun- 
day-school libraries are full of it. What was your 
daughter crying over? The tribulations of a pair 

7 



98 DIAMOND DUST. 

of unfortunate lovers, the course of whose affaires 
du cceur seemed running at the usual unsmooth 
rate. Some authors catalogued brilliant have 
written but little except how people may get 
married in spite of difficulties and obstacles. 

Sculpture, painting, poetry, music, all have 
been pressed into the business of drawing young 
people toward the Eden of wedded life. By this 
glamour during a decade of the most susceptible 
young years, marriage is made to appear the ne 
plus ultra of existence. For each there is wait- 
ing somewhere an angel that has chanced to be 
clothed in human form, and the chief end of life 
is to find that seraphic being and bring about a 
right understanding. But when the congratula- 
tions are over, the cake eaten, the flowers faded, 
the every-day dress resumed, the newly-joined 
pair find themselves thrust back suddenly into a 
sober, matter of fact world where people have to 
eat and drink, pay rent and doctor's bills. The 
angel turns out to be a only good-looking young 
fellow, who will smoke horrid cigars with his feet 
on the backs of the parlor chairs, and talk slang 
and pick his teeth at the table ; or a pleasant little 
woman in a somewhat unbecoming morning 
dress, who has shocking headaches at inoppor- 
tune times, and who cries to see her mamma 
when things are not exactly to her mind. "To 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 99 

work" is the verb that must be conjugated now 
in all its moods and tenses, though the mistaken 
pair expected to loiter sunnily through "to en- 
joy." If they had been held to better sense they 
would have found that the two are synonyms. 

The fiction-steeped ambrosia and nectar begin 
to sour. The cream of life seems to be only bit- 
ter whey, and there they are, fast for a life-time, 
their happiness wrecked by a charming blunder ! 

That conviction, do you see, is as wrong as 
were their azure and gold expectations. They 
may swing back to a sensible view of the case, 
though some never do. 

Young people ought to go through with their 
courtship with their eyes open. The blind Cupid 
is a pretty myth for the poets, but not one in 
whose hands we may risk our happiness for life. 
When a young man fancies that he is marrying 
perfection, we can but anticipate for him a disa- 
greeable awaking. Knowing the tendency of 
human nature to extremes, we quite expect him 
to take a tiit in the opposite direction, and un- 
derrate the lady in the ratio of his present ex- 
travagance. That is what we always do when 
disappointed in any friend. We mark him as 
much too low as we had him before too high. 

A little common sense is an immense help in 
such cases. Let the young man understand that 



ioo DIAMOND DUST. 

his lady-love, though quite as angelic as it is 
proper for his wife to be, is simply human after 
all, made of about the same material as the 
mother who bothers him with her advice and wor- 
ries because he does not heed it, or the sister 
whom he drives into the pouts now and then with 
his teasing. The same human stuff, only more 
thoroughly in his power — more easily hurt His 
mother knows that he is growing away from her 
and presently he will go into a home of his own. 
His sister comforts herself with the hope that 
she will have somebody some day to love her 
boundlessly — some one who will not torment her 
so. But this woman knows that there is no 
proper way out of the reach of his burriness ex- 
cept to die. 

Some set out with right notions, but they are 
quite too prodigal of each other s love and pa- 
tience. They seem to take it for granted that 
the supply is exhaustless. To be sure, it took a 
world of effort to bring the affair to its present 
delicious state, but, thank Providence, it is hap- 
pily adjusted at last. After the knot is tied they 
may be as careless as they choose to be about 
those little attentions and politenesses of which 
they were so profuse a few months before. This 
is a radical mistake. It takes more care to hold 
than to w r in a love. If it be worth any thing, 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 101 

and you are certainly not so idiotic as to think 
it of no moment that the friend nearest you 
should care for you always tenderly, you ought 
to plan deliberately to keep alive the sentiment 
you have been so fortunate as to inspire. 

The graduate is a failure who stops studying 
when he takes his diploma. The victorious gen- 
eral who does not keep connection with his base 
of supplies will soon find himself in no enviable 
position. The young Christian who congratulates 
himself that he has nothing to do but to sing and 
praise will soon find that he has little left over 
which to rejoice. So the man who thinks his 
courtship ends with the bridal "yes," or the 
woman who backslides into the slipshod and 
easy-going as soon as her husband is caught, is 
sure to wreck domestic happiness. 

Married people must not expect to think ex- 
actly alike about every thing. Of course, each 
must be firm in matters of conscience, but in 
the non-essentials let each defer to the other's 
preference, as far as possible. There is no use 
in arguing. Let there be candor and the utmost 
respect for each other's opinions in the consider- 
ation of questions about which there is a differ- 
ence. If an agreement seems impossible, let 
that controverted point be fenced about — unap- 
proachable territory — like the Elis of the Greeks. 



102 DIAMOND DUST. 

The one who has most patience and self-control 
will probably win in the long run. 

There are those who loved each other gen- 
uinely at the outset who have suffered the cares 
of life to crowd them into coldness and indiffer- 
ence. If the eye of such a one rests upon this 
page, let me whisper that there is hope. It is 
never too late to mend. Your love may have 
been cut down by the frost so that it has hardly 
put forth a leaf for a dozen years; but the roots 
are alive, and with care the plant will spring up 
again. Let there be an explanation, an under- 
standing, if practicable. Let each decide to be- 
gin anew to live as people ought, with the help 
of the good God. It will be no small undertak- 
ing — much harder than to have kept right from 
the first. Your habits are against you, and you 
are less mobile in character, but it can be done, 
and it will pay. 

Perhaps the mutual regard has been so long 
buried, the ground above it tramped so hard 
by neglect and coldness and little asperities, that 
its very life is a matter of doubt. But remem- 
ber you -are bound together for all time. Not 
only your own but your children's happiness is 
at stake. Give the love the benefit of the 
doubt. Act toward each other as if all were 
right between you. Keep back every impatient 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 103 

look and word as carefully as if you were trying 
to secure some great favor of a stranger. Try 
the effect of the little attentions that drew you 
together at first — the confidences, the silent de- 
ferring to each other's taste. Begin anew your 
courtship. Before marriage you always had for 
each other a kind look, a smile, a word of wel- 
come. Try it now. If one comes in whom it 
is to your interest to please, it does not matter 
how tired or worried you are, you can smooth 
your face and put on a smile. There is no hu- 
man being whose deportment toward you can 
affect your life like the demeanor of the one to 
whom you are bound for w r eal or woe. Better 
a thousand times please that one by your kindly 
courtesy than all the world besides. Let the 
wife meet her husband at the door with a kiss 
when he comes home from his day's work. If 
she goes into his office or store or study, let 
him treat her with as much politeness as he 
would use toward a stranger, and not intimate 
that she is a great bother, only " around after 
money." 

Let each give the other special attention at 
the table, as though there were none there, not 
even guests, who are more to be honored. It 
will not be long till the ice will give way, and 
the warm tide of early love will be again pulsat- 



104 DIAMOND DUST. 

ing through hearts that had nearly lost hope. 
This must be done or the united life that might 
be a bond of surest strength, will prove to be 
like the robe steeped in the blood of Nessus — a 
ceaseless, deadly galling. 

You were deceived in your choice? The 
probability is you are far better mated than you 
think; and if you were free, you would do 
about the same thing again. At any rate, your 
one chance is to make the best of the case as 
it is now. That coldness may be only a crust 
of reticence over a warm, quick heart. The 
peevishness may be merely the querulousness 
of hunger for which no one is so much to blame 
as yourself. 

Well for society and the world if the well- 
meaning, frigid people could be induced to begin 
anew a cordial treatment of each other, and thus 
happiness be brought back to many an empty- 
hearted, lonely home. 

Married people are altogether too chary of 
their commendation of each other's good acts. 
They can criticise and censure and wax eloquent 
over faults, delivering themselves of proverbs, 
with homilies attached, ad infinitum; but a right 
good, hearty word of praise — it would choke 
them, one might think. 

And an immense, psychological blunder is 



MARRIED PEOPLE. 105 

that, to be sure. We are oftener helped to hu- 
mility by honest, straightforward approval of 
our efforts than by scolding and fault-finding. 
Some who carry the bravest face are at the de- 
spair point because they amount to so little, 
staggering under a burden of fancied incompe- 
tency, needing far more than any one ever 
dreams a little encouragement. Help them over 
that hard place, and they, will have time and 
strength to think of being actually humble. 

Some men are full of praise of their domestic 
establishments behind the back of their wives — 
the very ones who need the good word — while, 
in the presence of the disheartened hausmiitters, 
you could hardly draw a syllable of appreciation 
from them with forceps. 

In old times good people used to put on 
their Sunday clothes and kid gloves before they 
dared speak of their . religious experience; and 
their love for their friends fared but little better. 
If one spoke of the love of God shed abroad in 
his heart by the Holy Spirit, it was regarded a 
sure sign that he was a hypocrite. No clearer 
mark of a reprobate than to believe your sins 
pardoned, and have a disposition to declare the 
joyful fact In those old iron-clad days if a 
married pair indulged ''before folks" in any sort 
of manifestations of regard, they were set down 



106 DIAMOND DUST. 

at once as people who quarrel when the eye of 
the dear public is off their behavior. So they 
trudged on, those old saints, at infinite pains to 
keep the fire shut in most carefully, while those 
who were dearer than life were freezing to death 
at their side. 

Unfortunately, this frigid mode of life has 
not all passed away with knee-buckles and ruffled 
shirts. There are plenty of married people yet 
who walk icily side by side, till one bends over 
the other's dying bed. Then, when there is 
little use, the pent stream bursts forth. The 
wealth that was intended for all those cold, hun- 
gry years, is poured forth lavishly, and it is all 
too late! 

Let us be wise in time. God never meant 
this life to be a desert utterly barren of all that 
is good and beautiful and refreshing and glad. 

Finally, in this matter, "Whatsoever things 
are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatso- 
ever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things 
are of good report; if there be any virtue, and 
if there be any praise, think on these things." 

A home where Christ abides is a little rem- 
nant of Eden. The benediction of God falls ver- 
tically upon its blessed inmates. It can but be 
a power in the evangelization of the race, an 



MARRIED PEOPLE, 107 

armory where God's soldiers are equipped. Let 
Christian homes be constructed by that wisdom 
that is "from above, that is first pure, then 
peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, 
full of mercy and good fruits, without parti- 
ality, and without hypocrisy." Then " the fruit 
of righteousness" will be "sown in peace for 
them that make peace." 

Let the Scriptural law of unselfish love and 
reverence, based as it is upon the inherent dig- 
nit) 7 of humanity, and the golden rule of giving 
precisely what each would wish to receive from 
the other — let this divine dictum be observed. 

Then shall the home be, what God meant in 
its plan, the center and stronghold of the civili- 
zation, the very exponent and chief guard of 
Christianity. Children born in such gardens of 
good will escape the spiritual warping and maim- 
ing that now so often sends them forth into the 
work of the world hopelessly tyrannical or cring- 
ing, self-confident or discouraged, unable to touch 
the problems of the future that press alike upon 
the sympathies and energies of men and women. 

By the arithmetic of heaven, while one may 
chase a thousand, two can put ten thousand to 
flight, — the uniting of strength multiplying the 
efficiency by five. So of a good man and woman 
joining hands for the long walk through life, 



108 DIAMOND DUST. 

each free in Christ's freedom, each living by the 
divine will, and yet the twain united by the 
miracle of Him who honored with his presence 
the wedding in Cana of Galilee, and who must 
always himself unite the truly married, — the 
union after this manner can but increase infin- 
itely the ability for noble work. 






"Two heads in council; two beside the hearth; 
Two in the tangled business of the world ; 
Two in the liberal offices of life ; 
Two plummets dropped for one to sound, the abyss 
Of science and the secrets of the mind. 
In the long years liker must they grow, 
The man be more of woman, she of man. 
He gain in moral height, nor lose 
The wrestling thews that throw the world. 
She, mental breadth, nor fail in childward care 
Till at the last she set herself to him 
Like perfect music unto noblest words; 
Then comes the statelier Eden back to man, 
Then reign the world's great bridals chaste and calm, 
Then springs the crowning race of human kind." 



SAVING THE LIFE. 1 09 



THE Scriptures always sketch from life. 
They do not group figures for ' artistic 
effect, throwing awkward facts into the back- 
ground. If their pages had been dictated by 
human wisdom, the immoralities of the patri- 
archs, David's sin, Solomon's defection and Pe- 
ter's lie would have been left out, and so would 
the disputes of the disciples about which should 
be the greatest. 

The Bible, like one who takes an instantane- 
ous photographic view, brings before us people 
as they were, and not as they ought to have 
been. In this naturalness, this humanness, this 
truthfulness, may be found much of the force of 
its teachings. 

The very defects of its characters are helpful, 
because they are so much like those that cripple 
us and deprive us of power for good. They are 
like signals of warning set up in dangerous ways, 
like light-houses built upon terrible rocks. They 
cry to us, " Beware, a great soul perished here ! 



HO DIAMOND DUST. 

Stand off, a nation struck that reef and went 
down !" 

Probably none of the warnings of Scripture 
are more needed by many souls than that given 
in the apostolic quarrel about who should be the 
greatest. It was certainly a very weak and child- 
ish affair. A struggle for pre-eminence among 
the disciples of a Master who was so poor he 
had not where to lay his head, dependent for his 
food upon the charity of those who risked all in 
his service, and obliged to work a miracle to get 
money to pay his taxes. It w r as most inoppor- 
tune. The gloom of Gethsemane and Calvary 
had begun to settle upon his soul. He was in 
the first act of the awful redemptive tragedy. It 
was unutterably discouraging. He was lifting to 
his lips the cup of doom prepared by sin for 
every human soul. He was about to taste death 
for every man. The life he was to purchase 
could come only by the casting out of the old, 
selfish nature. Yet those whom he had been 
teaching for three years, and who had been per- 
mitted to enter with him the very inner sanctu- 
ary of the divine presence, were giving way be- 
fore the very first onslaught of the enemy, to 
that pride and selfishness that he was sacrificing 
his life to eradicate. 

Foolish and inopportune and discouraging as 



SAVING THE LIFE. in 

was that miserable dispute, it was no worse than 
what the Master has heard in the hearts and 
homes of Christians many and many a time now- 
adays, and always. That same wretched ques- 
tion echoes and re-echoes through our lives, day 
by day, like the ceaseless wash of waves. 

The Savior was at infinite pains to bring them 
and us to a better understanding of life and its 
uses. He said again and again, " If any man 
desires to be first among you, the same shall be 
last of all and servant of all." Our stumbling so 
constantly at this point is a sure index that there 
is a right impulse of the soul, and a strong one, 
that has broken loose from restraint and lost its 
way, and from that comes the trouble. We de- 
sire to save the life from utter oblivion and for- 
ge tfulness. 

' 'To die, 
To sink as sinks the traveler who falls 
In the streets of busy London, 
When the crowds close in and all ? s forgotten." 

This seems such a pitiful fate, so like never 
having existed, so like being blotted completely 
from the roll of being, w r e look about in desper- 
ate earnest to find something w 7 ithin the compass 
of our power that shall give us immortality. 
We want to clamber a little way above the com- 
mon herd whose very names will be forgotten be- 
fore their bodies fairly turn to dust. A fortune, 



112 DIAMOND DUST. 

political preferment, professional reputation, liter- 
ary fame, something must help us to a niche in 
the rocks where we may write our little story 
with a hope that the waves may not wear it away 
for at least half a century. 

Possibly we lack in genuine self-respect We 
want to bolster our importance by some outward 
manifestations that indicate our consequence. 
We must distinguish ourselves in some way to 
set us at peace with ourselves. 

Some have an inborn love of power, a death- 
less determination to stand first and foremost at 
all cost to others. The Alexanders, the Tamer- 
lanes, the Attilas, the Caesars, the Napoleons 
shine forth in the firmament of history, their 
lamps lighted at the altar fire, kept burning upon 
the shrine of godless ambition. They flame with 
a lurid gleam, like torches made ragged by the 
gloom, and flaring over pools of battle gore. 

Like the attempts of the Egyptians to stave 
off the doom of forgetfulness by postponing the 
decay of the lifeless body, they succeed only in 
perpetuating the loathsomeness of death — their 
fame being little more than a disgusting mummy. 

Jesus said, ' ' Whosoever will save his life 
shall lose it ; but w r hosoever will lose his life for 
my sake the same shall save it." 

They who have really saved the life, living 



SAVING THE LIFE. 113 

through the ages in the continued vitality of their 
thought and action, are those who have wrought 
by the Master's rule, losing all in a single-eyed 
devotion to right principle. 

Among the very first names upon this Roll 
of Honor, we find that of Abel, the proto-mar- 
tyr to the doctrine of justification by faith. His 
voice, muffled by distance, comes to us from the 
dim, early dawn, emphasizing the vital truth for 
which he died. " He being dead, yet speaketh," 
and his utterance is echoed by the most ad- 
vanced religious thought of this, the latest cen- 
tury. "The just shall live by faith." 

Moses also saved his life by its loss. He 
found the greater part of the inhabitants of the 
globe segregated, nomadic. There were neither 
domestic nor civil institutions worth the name, 
because there were none based upon the eternal 
principles of right. Man as man had not enough 
inherent dignity to enable him to claim any consid- 
eration at the hand of another, except what mus- 
cular or monetary power could exact as his due. 

Moses found the dominant race, the more 
highly civilized and intellectual, enslaving the 
the simpler and weaker, and keeping it under 
by murdering its children and forcing it to toil 
ceaselessly to fill the land with architectural 
marvels. 



1 1 4 DIAMOND D UST. 

Impetuous in his fiery zeal, and full of enthu- 
siasm for a grand principle, he threw himself into 
the work of reform. He slew an Egyptian who 
happened to be an exponent of the general op- 
pression, and hid him in the sand. He found, 
to his cost, that he was working at the wrong 
end of the problem. The subject race must be 
made to comprehend its own dignity. The prin- 
ciple violated in human servitude is the inherent 
greatness of humanity, and they who are under 
can be trusted to rise to equality or superiority 
only as they apprehend this principle. Without 
that apprehension a change -of position would be 
only a change of tyrannies. 

To lift up a man or a race, one need not 
trouble himself to make the oppressor understand 
the worth of the slave. Let him teach the slave 
his own dignity, and trust him to make his mas- 
ter comprehend that lesson. The liberator must 
also see so plainly the tremendous import of hu- 
man life, that he will go down among the op- 
pressed and share the obloquy of their wrongs, 
sustained by his belief in the intrinsic human 
royalty. 

To emancipate the degraded Israelites, Moses 
had to go to work, not as the Egyptian prince 
philosopher, the heir of the proud throne of 
the Pharaohs; he must count the wealth of 



SA VING THE LIFE, 1 1 5 

achievement in lifting up the enslaved greater 
riches than the treasures of Egypt, with its affluent 
old civilization. It took forty silent, meditative 
years alone with Jehovah in Midian for him to 
learn that lesson. At last he promulgated his 
code, giving the wisest adjustment of the rela- 
tions of men to men possible for many centuries. 
He epitomized common law, which, after the 
lapse of nearly four thousand years, wraps the 
civilized world in the mantle of its guardianship. 

And what a grand saving of the life was 
his ! To be able to lay a net-work of obliga- 
tion upon all the races that recognize the in- 
spired supremacy of conscience — giving to untold 
millions the happiness of a safe, protected life. 
What an expansion and intensifying of one's 
own vitality! What if he did wrap himself in a 
coarse Arab mantle and lie down to die upon 
Nebo, crownless, scepterless, throneless, with no 
shelter but the open sky, a houseless wanderer? 
For what better tent could we ask in which such 
a grand being should breathe out his life, than 
the star-gemmed heavens, with the sun in his 
strength and the moon in her brightness to guard 
his burial place — angels about him, and Jehovah 
to minister the last mortal rites? 

Aristotle was another of the glorious self- 
givers. It was his work to carry the world from 



1 1 6 DIA MOND D UST. 

the brazen into the silver age. Under his power, 
brawn yielded to brain. Muscle had been king 
and thought its slave.^ He reversed the order, 
and made the animal serve the intellectual. He 
taught the subjugation of the passions by the 
reason, and for twenty centuries his dictum has 
been obeyed in all the lands conquered by his 
genius. 

He died in the outer, that he might save the 
true, strong, inner life. Of the Macedonian no- 
bility, the tutor of Alexander the Great, endowed 
by his royal pupil with millions of money, cov- 
ered with courtly honors, yet he held steady to 
the work in hand. No bribes could buy him; 
no flatteries seduce him; no successes inflate 
him ; no glories swerve him from his course. 
When the tide turned, and the people for whose 
emancipation he had given his best years rejected 
his counsel and cast out his name as evil, he 
stood unmoved like a rock among the breakers, 
choosing rather to suffer affliction than to aban- 
don the principles of right after which he had 
groped in his heathen twilight. He died an 
exile, yet the mighty reform he wrought in the 
domain of intellect has made reasoning reliable, 
and all emancipation possible. 

The Greeks who lived and taught before Aris- 
totle's day had a supreme contempt for human-. 



SA VI NG THE LIFE. 1 1 7 

ity, seeing in it only the development of fine 
animal life, and regarding it of value only so far 
as it was physically faultless. Aristotle put his 
shoulder under the burden of the world's wrong 
judgment and consequent oppressions, and 
through all the long centuries the animal has 
never regained the ascendency. He died to all 
that was preferred by the people around him, 
yet he will live forever in the gratitude of the 
thoughtful. 

Mohammed, also, gained all by losing all. 
He found the people groaning, almost uncon- 
sciously, under the beastly burdens laid upon 
them by their many gods. He tried to teach 
them a pure, monotheistic worship. The}' called 
him an impostor, and drove him from his native 
city. He persevered against all obstacles, till 
they came at last to believe that they had found 
in him their long -looked -for deliverer. Then 
came his coronation-day; and for four centuries 
the scholarship of the world was found among 
his followers. His life was a forfeit to his pur- 
pose to establish monotheism. He sacrificed to 
that work ease, pleasure, all earthly good. Only 
thus could he succeed. 

William, Prince of Orange, enjoyed his 
broad estates and elegant life, probably, with a 
nebulous notion of human equality floating 



Il8 DIAMOND DUST. 

through his brain. In the midst of luxury, how 
could he know the hard life of the poor? In 
high favor with royalty, how could he under- 
stand the grinding taxation necessary to support 
regal pomp and glory? God meant him to be 
the champion of civil and religious liberty, and 
it took hard discipline to arouse him fully to the 
need of the hour. 

The Romish Church stole his son, and that 
awakened him to a sense of its tyrannies. The 
Duke of Alva, with his dragonnades, trying to 
establish the Inquisition in Holland, made per- 
sonal liberty a myth. When the silent states- 
man began actively to remonstrate, his estates 
were wrested from him; and then, with an 
empty purse, insufficient service, indifferent cloth- 
ing, no place of safety, a price on his head, the 
proud Prince of Orange began to know the 
meaning of poverty. Then he became truly the 
friend of the poor. 

When the great, hungry need of the op- 
pressed people laid its hand upon his shoulder, 
he was young, rich, courted, full of the proudest, 
highest life. It led him, step by step, down the 
winding stair to its den of want. He became 
one with the common people. He gave all for 
their emancipation. When, under the assassin's 
steel, he was dying for their liberties, his last 



SAVING THE LIFE. 119 

words attested the completeness of his identity 
with the cause of the poor, "O my God, have 
mercy upon my poor people !" A wail went to 
heaven from every home in Holland. He who 
had lost his life for the sake of a noble cause 
had gained the first place on his country's roll 
of honor and in the regard of all good men 
and true. 

A man in our own country and time lived 
and died like William the Silent, losing his life 
for the oppressed, and saving it to the best and 
most enduring immortality. He gave liberty to 
as many millions as did the Prince of Orange, 
and humbled as proud an oligarchy. 

Lincoln came from among the "poor white 
trash" of the South, yet as princely a soul was 
housed in his rough physique as lived in the 
bosom of the man of elegant culture and noble 
blood. One has said of him, "His large palm 
never slipped from the poor man's hand. A 
child of the people, he was as accessible in the 
White House as he had been in the cabin. The 
griefs of the poor African were as sacred to him 
as were the claims of the opulent white man/' 
Measuring all by their humanity, he found them 
essentially equal. Seeing in God the Father of 
all, he saw in every man a brother. 

In the senatorial contest between Lincoln 



T20 DIAMOND DUST. 

and Douglas the latter was victorious. Lincoln 
said: "His life is all success, mine all failure. I 
would give every thing for his opportunity of 
working for the uplifting of the oppressed." 
After the hard discipline of the years, his hour 
came. He was found equal to the complete self- 
giving that marked him the Christly man of the 
ages, and in the achievement he gave all, hold- 
ing steady to his purpose even when his friends 
turned from him in distrust. At last he gave his 
life for the cause he served. 

He was like the century plant that we saw a 
few years ago. After seventy patient years it 
burst into glorious bloom, and then it died. After 
the supreme act of his life Lincoln went to God, 
and the mourning throughout all lands where 
liberty was loved was as if one were dead in 
every household. Said a Russian lady upon the 
shore of the Black Sea to a tourist, ' ' So you are 
from America — Lincoln's land. When word 
came that they had killed him, I could do noth- 
ing for hours but walk the floor and say, 'Lin- 
coln is dead! Lincoln is dead!' " 

The Great Commoner, he interpreted to the 
people their own sense of dignity. Though he 
lost his life, he saved it by the suffrage of uni- 
versal thoughtful humanity. 

The life of Jesus the Christ was the most 



SAVING THE LIFE. 121 

emphatic illustration of saving the life through its 
loss. 

He who is ' ' the blessed and only Potentate, 
who only hath immortality," "made himself 
of no reputation, took upon him the form of a 
servant, and was made in the likeness of men ; 
and being found in form as a man, he hum- 
bled himself and became obedient to death, even 
the death of the cross." 

He went down into the very depths of human 
lostness that he might put his great heart under 
the burden of the curse. Like a strong swimmer 
who had dived among the monsters in the cav- 
erns under the sea, he came up pale, exhausted, 
quivering in every nerve, but bearing in his arms 
a rescued race. 

Of all who ever lived none so completely and 
abundantly saved his power for good, his vitality, 
his life as did Jesus. To-day the thought of the 
crucified Galilean is the mainspring of the civi- 
lizations. All bonds that bind together the na- 
tions and hold them back from savagery are of 
his weaving. All cords that draw them toward 
the throne of the Eternal are of his twining. He 
is not only the Way and the Truth, he is also 
the Life. 

Since it appears plain that to make the life 
amount to the most in God's work, it is neces- 



122 DIAMOND DUST. 

sary to lose it, we may ask what it is to lose the 
life for Christ's sake. 

Is it not to submit to his control all that goes 
to the make-up of the being? 

Perhaps in no point of self-surrender does the 
will take a more stubborn stand than in submit- 
ting to him the conduct of the life. 

Self-direction is the regal power. It is the 
crowning glory of human existence. Most 
thoughtful people will die rather than surrender 
to others this citadel. Thousands have preferred, 
death to servitude, since nothing seems so de- 
grading as unconditional submission to a human 
will. 

It is not easy to surrender even to God the 
control of one's individuality. 

It adds to the difficulty to know that for the 
sake of discipline and development He will prob- 
ably lead us to just the work we most dislike, and 
hold us back from the things that we prefer. 

A wise mother crowds out upon the play- 
ground the nervous, sensitive child that is forever 
poring over his books, while she holds to study 
the robust, roystering one who is always ready 
for any thing that will take him away from his 
lessons. So, in his efforts to bring us to com- 
pleteness of character, God will probably have to 
lead us directly against our inclination. 



SAVING THE LIFE^ 1 23 

If one is specially fond of public work he 
may be ordered to the rear, that in the retire- 
ment of private life his piety may be deepened, 
and his reflective faculties duly developed; while 
another who has thought and studied a great 
deal, shrinking always from public notice, may 
be sent to the front that he may be obliged to 
have new courage and daring, and because others 
need the result of his accumulated thought. 

When called upon to place ourselves in God's 
hand we may have a premonition of this disci- 
pline that will make us draw back from the pain. 

When the mother of James and John asked that 
her sons might sit, one on the right and the other 
on the left hand of the Master in his kingdom, 
he asked if they were able to drink of the cup 
that he was to drink of, and to be .baptized with 
the baptism that he was baptized with. They an- 
swered "We are able." Probably they under- 
stood better the terms of promotion in the king- 
dom of the Redeemer, when the headsman's 
sword gleamed above the head of one, and the 
other was hunted from city to city by his perse- 
cuting kinsmen. 

It may be helpful for us to glance at some of 
the specific points that come under this generic 
principle of self-surrender. Our wish to acquire 
property must be given to God. This is one of 



124 DIAMOND DUST. 

the first impulses shown by a little child. He 
pulls every thing toward himself,and cries if what 
he has seized is taken out of his hand. He must 
have every thing that catches his attention and 
pleases his fancy, whether it be his father's watch 
or the moon. 

Nothing pleases the boy better than to have 
something for his very own, "to keep forever 
and ever." 

When he gets older he sets himself to get the 
best of every thing. He may divide with the 
less fortunate, but it is because the name and 
sense of being generous may furnish more pleas- 
ure than the use of the trifle he gives — acquir- 
ing another gain, a finer and greater one. 

After passing his thirtieth mile-stone he cares 
less for that pleasure and more for substantial 
acquisition's. So he begins to store away the 
dollars or their equivalent. He must have a 
place and stock of his own. 

With most people of forty, fifty, and sixty, 
the determination to get property becomes the 
dominant purpose. They may flatter themselves 
that they do not love money, yet they hardly 
dare deny that they do care immensely for the 
consideration and the attention that the world gives 
those only who are accounted rich. It seems a 
fine thing to have elegant madames trail their 



SAVING"' THE LIFE, 125 

costly silks in at one's door, while a coachman 
in livery drives the superb carriage up and down 
the street in front of the house, and to hear the 
rustle in an audience when one enters a church, 
or hall, and the sweet sibilants, "our first citi- 
zens," "our best families." Who would not en- 
joy the thousand and one obsequious attentions 
that are paid to the wealthy ? Who would not 
shun the neglect, and coldness, and contempt 
with which the poor are usually treated. "The 
rich have many friends, but the poor is hated 
even of his own neighbor." 

How often we hear the expression, "poor, but 
worthy," as if the terms were usually antithetic, 
and so must be separated by a disjunctive — the 
case named being an exception to the rule. That 
shows the general drift of the current of opinion, 
and few of us are of better mind, even though 
we be followers of the crucified Nazarene. 

The spirit of the world is wrong in this esti- 
mate of people, and God means to set it right. 
If he gets us in hand he will spare no pains to 
correct our false notions. He will make us un- 
derstand human equality. He will give us to 
see that a few thousands of money, more or less, 
make no sort of difference .with one's intrinsic 
worth, and in order to that it may be necessary 
to give us a view from the lower side of the scale 



126 DIAMOND DUST. 

of his standard of values. Some one has said, 
"God shows how little he thinks of wealth by 
the class of people to whom he permits its pos- 
session." His nobility, they of whom the world 
was not worthy, "were stoned, were sawn asun- 
der, were tempted, were slain with the sword ; 
they wandered about in sheepskins, and goat- 
skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented/' 

The twelve, to whom the highest possible 
honor w r as promised, were driven from place to 
place with cruel mockings and scourgings, and 
all but one sealed their testimony with their 
blood. 

Paul the noblest of them all, a prince of the 
realm, was familiar with hunger, and nakedness, 
and perils. He suffered the loss of all things for 
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. 
While he sat in the dark at Damascus he was 
shown how great things he must suffer for the 
sake of the Gospel. And the Spirit showed 
him that every-where bonds and imprisonments 
awaited his coming. When we surrender to 
God this natural desire for the pleasant things 
of this life we are not at all sure but he may 
lead us to an apprehension of his estimate of 
human circumstances by some such processes. 

If one is permitted to keep his property after 
accepting the divine will in the matter, he holds 



SAVING THE LIFE. 127 

it no longer as his own, but always subject to 
the order of God. His sense of ownership is 
changed to a simple stewardship ; so that, though 
he may not have to deed it away to a Church or 
charity, it is as certainly given up as if it had 
passed out of his hands. All this implies an 
immense overturn of natural tendencies, and the 
uprooting of habits that are the growth of years. 
No wonder it is called a crucifixion, and that it 
seems like an actual losing of the life. 

Closely allied to our desire for property is 
our wish to be well spoken of — highly esteemed. 
This also must be surrendered. And in it, as 
in the other points of character that have been 
shaped by general opinion, we may expect dis- 
cipline. They said of our Master, <l He hath a 
devil;" and he says to us, ''The disciple is not 
above his Lord." 

It is no easy matter to consent to be led di- 
rectly against the opinions of those to whose 
judgment we have been accustomed to defer. 
In that experience we begin to know something 
of the weight of the "cross of our Lord Jesus 
Christ by whom the world is crucified unto us 
and we unto the world." 

The crucifixion of self-surrender would not be 
so hard if we could suffer one great pang, and 
have done with it; or if, in the submission, we 



128 DIAMOND DUST. 

might so lose our free agency as to be perfectly 
safe from ever drawing back unto perdition; or, 
if we could look our last upon the temptations 
of the world, and shut ourselves up in some 
sweet, quiet cloister, where there would be only 
prayers and meditations and holy offices. But 
it is the plan of God that we shall present our 
bodies a living sacrifice, and any drawing back 
will abate correspondingly our union with God, 
and our deadness to the world. 

And just here we note one of the paradoxes 
of the Gospel. We are never so fully and com- 
pletely alive as when we are dead. We have 
never so fully the symmetry of character, the 
strength, the enjoyment, the assurance of living 
by the law of our being, the certainty of suc- 
cess, as when we have surrendered all to the 
Master. 

When we are dead, and our life is hid with 
Christ in God, we are most keenly alive to every 
worthy interest, we have the most glorious full- 
ness of existence. 

And what is the life that we save by the losing? 

It is primarily the spiritual life, and it de- 
pends upon union with God. The original life 
of the soul was forfeited by sin. Grace finds us 
dead in trespasses and sins, and renews in us 
the life of God. We live this life more or less 



SAVING THE LIFE, 129 

affluently in proportion to our submission to the 
divine will, and our trust in the atonement. 

When, in the maturity of our Christian knowl- 
edge, we accept the will of Christ in all things, 
he will lead us not only to completed spiritual 
life; he will also give us the best physical and 
mental culture possible. 

He will give us to understand that when our 
bodies belong to him, w T e must take care of them 
for him, and see that they subserve to their 
utmost the uses of the mind and spirit. We 
must give them good food, not to pamper false 
appetites, but to keep them in repair. They 
must have enough sleep, and only as much 
work as they can endure with safety. Well- 
meaning people have sometimes cheated God 
out of years of service by squandering their 
strength in overwork, or by crowding themselves 
through the drudgery of digesting the villain- 
ous compounds known as good fare, or by some 
other dissipation. 

When we comprehend that our bodies are 
the temples of the Holy Ghost we will keep 
them clean as well as strong. We will not 
drink nor chew nor smoke poisons that not only 
hurt us, but make us offensive to others. 

And it is doubted whether we w r ill cut holes 
in our noses and ears for the hanging on of 



130 DIAMOND DUST, 

pieces of metal as the custom is in heathen 
countries. 

We will stop our fretting when we come to 
know that the investment and use of our powers 
depend, not upon our puny wisdom, but upon 
unmistaking, divine judgment. We will cast our 
care on Him who careth for us : and with the 
care all taken off of the weak nerves, a little 
physical strength can be made to go a great way. 

When our mental pozvers are taken completely 
out of the service of self and devoted simply 
and only to that of our Heavenly Father, we will 
comprehend not merely our privilege, but our 
duty to bring them to the greatest strength. 

Satan crowds thoughtful people to study, that 
through their intellectual attainments they may 
gain money, refinement, luxuries, reputation, 
and friends. After grace has conquered their 
ambition, and they care no more for the pride 
of life, he holds them back by reminding them 
how much good has been done by people of 
low mental attainment. He would have them 
believe that it is better to give one's self wholly 
to devotion. 

If God does not want consecrated thought 
to be developed in strength, why has he given 
us mental acumen above the simplest uses? 
Certainly the very best of every thing belongs 



SAVING THE LIFE. 131 

to him, and nothing can transcend in polish or 
strength the needs of his work. 

He wants pictures full of thought and feel- 
ing, so delicately traced and beautifully limned 
that they shall set us looking toward himself, 
the Source and Author of beauty. He wants 
poems as pure and strong as angels winging 
their way into the homes of the people, and 
singing God's truth into needy souls. He wants 
books, vital with his own thought. For this 
very purpose he has made artistic, poetic, and 
literary talent. 

To be sure, some who have poor grammar, 
false rhetoric, and limping logic are used to win 
thousands to Christ; but who knows how much 
more might have been done by the same faith 
and fervor in a richly endowed and well-disci- 
plined soul. 

Never were so many persons converted under 
one sermon as under that of Peter, the Galilean 
fisherman, fresh from the Pentecostal baptism. 
Yet, afterward, that same Peter endangered the 
very life of the infant Church by truckling to 
Judaizing teachers. Paul had to withstand him 
to the face, because he was to be blamed. 
His undisciplined mind did not carry him 
through the task of settling the tenets of the 
new faith. It was Paul, trained in the best 



132 DIAMOND DUST. 

schools, who was used of God to give the 
Church its theology. 

In the Anglican revival of the last century it 
was not the fiery eloquence of Whitefield, who 
came untrained from the common people, that 
organized the victory, but the quiet, steady, 
Scholastic thought of Wesley and Clarke, with 
their broad erudition and profound culture. 

We need not fear intellectual pride while we 
trust Christ to save us from sin. At all events, 
his salvation is our hope of immunity from that, 
as from every other wrong tendency. No 
amount of personal humiliation, penance, or 
mind-starving will have the effect to keep us 
humble in regard to mental ability. He alone 
is the deliverer from evil. 

Above all, if we lose our life by surrendering 
it to God, we may claim and expect the most 
thorough discipline and complete development; 
possibly by processes not such as we would 
choose, but those that God sees best fitted to 
produce the result. 

We will have to learn to be abased before it 
is safe for us to abound. It took eighteen 
years to bring Columbus to nerve and daring 
enough to enable him to discover America. 
John Bunyan preached like a son of thunder, his 
soul on fire with zeal for the salvation of the 



SAVING THE LIFE, 133 

miserable masses. God permitted him to be 
shut up in Bedford jail for twelve long years. 
How his fiery spirit must have chafed! The 
world perishing, and he utterly powerless to help 
and save! But the result of that burying of 
energy was the production of his wonderful 
book, which has acquired an authority and cir- 
culation next only to the Book of God. 

Wood fire must be pent, buried out of sight 
to make charcoal ; and charcoal has to be shut in 
the very heart of the rock to crystallize into dia- 
monds. So, when our life is given to God we 
may look for discipline that shall seem to shut 
us from the very opportunities we seek, but we 
will find ultimately that it was administered in 
the highest wisdom to bring us to a strength and 
fullness of life that will enable us to do the 
heavier, higher work. 

"Pain's furnace blast within me quivers; 
God's breath upon the flame doth blow, 
And all my heart in anguish shivers, 
And trembles at the fiery glow. 
And yet I whisper, 'As God will,' 
And in his hottest fire hold still. 

He comes, and lays my heart, all heated 

On his hard anvil, minded so 
Into his own fair shape to beat it 

With his great hammer, blow on blow, 
And yet I whisper, 'As God will,' 
And 'neath his heaviest blows hold still." 



134 DIAMOND DUST. 

Our saved life will be hid with Christ in God. 
We will look out upon the petty squabblings 
and ambitions of the people as the mere bicker- 
ings of foolish little children. 

As if the King had taken us into his palace 
and given us costly clothing from his own ward- 
robe, and all the fine, high fellowship of the 
regal life, we might look down upon the peas- 
ants at their sports upon the green with kindly, 
patient charity, remembering the days when we 
were among them, and as full of eagerness as 
any in the small emulations, the little strivings 
for superiority; but now their pastimes have no 
charm. We would only wish that we could win 
them to seek the royal favor, and trust the 
royal bounty till they, too, should become heirs 
of the kingdom, joint heirs with the Great Prince. 

And what companionship would be ours — 
"with Christ!" what a secure hiding-place, — 
"in God!" Our "place of defense the muni- 
tions of rocks!" No care for the life that now 
is. Our "bread shall be given" us, our "waters 
shall be sure!" And for the eternal, the cease- 
less life, our "eyes shall see the King in his 
beauty. We shall behold the land that is very 
far off!" 



COURTEOUSNESS. 135 



POLISHED manners are not usually a pass- 
port to the confidence of good people, be- 
cause flatterers and diplomatists depend mainly 
upon the soft address for their power to deceive. 

The aesthetic has been the bond slave of evil 
passions, and the good have come to dread its 
potency. Fine culture has become effeminacy, 
weakness, voluptuousness. Forever in the his- 
torical rotations the cultured have become the 
degenerate and a prey to the rough and uncouth 
who are strong and virtuous. 

Macedonian abstinence conquered Persian 
magnificence. Roman discipline mastered the 
elegant Greeks. The rugged Norsemen tram- 
pled down that polished Roman civilization. 

Reading this the thoughtful have chosen the 
safety of rough virtue, instead of the weak pol- 
ish of culture. The studied roughness of the 
Roundheads followed the profligate elegance of 
the cavaliers. Puritan angularities are a swing- 
ing to the opposite extreme in the purpose to 



136 DIAMOND DUST. 

escape the sensuous formalism of a corrupt, de- 
caying Church. 

Every one has seen enough of the evil do- 
ings of especially smooth people to make him sus- 
picious of danger when there is in the manner a 
suggestion of finesse. 

There are snaky people who can turn a cor- 
ner as easily as can a viper. They wriggle into 
homes with their fine, obsequious airs, and charm 
every body with their polite attentions, their studi- 
ous care of the good feeling of all. In the mean- 
time, they are carrying out their deep-laid plans 
for self-aggrandizement, and secretly stinging to 
death all who are in their way. The honest, 
straightforward folk get so disgusted with these 
slimy, viperous methods, that they come to sus- 
pect an evil motive wherever there is a charming 
suavity. They swing to the opposite extreme, 
and prefer any sort of brusqueness to what they 
look upon as dangerous trickiness. 

There are none whom we so dread as the 
completely selfish and unscrupulous Becky 
Sharps, and the crawling, detestable Uriah 
Heeps. Yet we do greatly err if we set down 
every expression of humility, and every kind, 
appreciative utterance to the score of a purpose 
to wheedle for selfish uses. 

As the years clear our vision we come to un- 



COURTEOUSNESS. 137 

derstand that right and wrong lie back of the 
exterior. Chesterfieidian manners may gloss 
black intentions; and so may sanctimonious 
boorishness. Blandness of address is not of ne- 
cessity a badge of badness. 

It can not be denied that there are false court- 
esies that are used to win the regard for sheer, 
unmitigated selfishness. There are hypocrites 
who steal the livery of heaven to serve the devil 
in. There are chameleon-like people who change 
the color of their coat to suit the preference of 
the company into which they may chance to 
fall. There are the courtier-like — those who re- 
semble the sycophants that dance attendance 
upon royalty, sunning themselves in its smile, 
and slinking away from its frown. Their base- 
ness is proverbial. Indeed, the quality under 
consideration — courteousness — takes name from 
the same source that gives them theirs, hence, 
possibly, a little of the suspicion with which the 
sturdily honest receive people of fine manners. 

There is, also, a supercilious counterfeit of 
courtesy that comes rather from a lack of appre- 
hension of the intrinsic dignity of humanity, and 
of the law that regulates our relation to others, 
than from malignant selfishness. A man who 
could upon no account forget to touch his hat 
to a lady, and yet who can speak roughly to a 



138 DIAMOND DUST. 

pauper's child, knows nothing of true politeness. 
A woman may know by heart the rules of eti- 
quette — the precise number of steps to advance 
or retire, the exact curve of the hand and bend 
of the head, for each salutation, and a faultless 
inflection for the pretty little nothings that so- 
ciety dictates for this, that, or the other occa- 
sion ; and yet, if she speaks abruptly to her 
sewing-girl, sharply to her children, or peevishly 
to her husband, she has yet to learn the first 
principles of genuine courtesy. 

The very fact of a counterfeit argues the ex- 
istence of the real ; and the free use of the spu- 
rious proves the possible power of the genuine, 

There could be no hypocrites if there were 
no Christians to imitate; and the constant use 
of 'finesse demonstrates that abundant influence is 
secured by a pleasant address. 

When one handles much coin he comes to 
know the counterfeit by the touch, the ring, the 
very color. Politeness that is from the heart 
comes to be generally known. It gives rest and 
warmth to the weary and heavy laden. 

Heartless courtesies are like dead things, 
stirring with a galvanized mockery of life. The 
sensitive soul shrinks from them as we do from 
cold worms crawling upon the flesh. 

Tnte courtesy is born of self-respect and charity. 



CO UR TEO USNESS. 1 3 9 

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
The entire system of etiquette is epitomized in 
that sentence, and not the least important part 
of it is the last clause — as thyself. It presup- 
poses appreciation of personal dignity. 

No one who comprehends his relation to the 
Lord of glory, his possible coheirship with 
Christ to an "inheritance incorruptible and un- 
defined, and that fadeth not away," can be a 
cringing sycophant. No one with a sense of 
the dignity of redeemed humanity can be super- 
ciliously careless of the right to kind attention 
inherent in the very humblest and lowest. He 
can but understand that 

"Of one clay God made us all, 

And though men push and poke and paddle in 't 

(As children play at fashioning dirt pies) 

And call their fancies by the name of facts, 

Assuming difference, lordship, privilege, 

When all's plain dirt — they come back to it at last; 

The first grave-digger proves it with a spade 

And pats all even." 

It is a nice thing to weigh one's own capa- 
bilities and adjust one's claim to respect. Some 
people are in a perpetual "claim quarrel" with 
society. Their demands are never met; and 
they are forever in a grumble — disappointed, un- 
appreciated. Of necessity such fail to be court- 
eous. They must first be reconciled to those 



140 DIAMOND DUST. 

about them who, as they say, have a pique at 
them, and then they can treat others with due 
civility. 

Others undervalue themselves, though they 
differ widely from each other in their manner 
of showing their self-depreciation. They may 
blunder along through the proprieties, violating 
each principle, because they so constantly dis- 
trust their own judgment, fear to take their 
proper place, underrate their own dignity. In a 
perpetual purpose to get to the foot of the 
class, where, they seem to think, they are pre- 
destined to stand, they incommode the whole 
line, jostling a dozen others out of place. They 
make distressing efforts to be agreeable, but 
their shortcomings so confuse them that they are 
in a ceaseless flutter of apology. They never 
make up their minds to do a thing the best they 
can, and let that suffice — simply and plainly, if 
simple and plain has been their culture. 

One who has sufficient insight to look down 
through outer glosses to the intrinsic worth, is 
never at a loss about his deportment. If he is 
taken into a circle to whose formulae of etiquette 
he is a stranger he does not worry every body 
with his apologetic newousness. He is simply 
and quietly himself. He does not compare his 
appearance with that of those about him, be- 



CO UR 1 £0 USAT£SS. 1 4 1 

cause he understands that the difference between 
social castes is very slight, at most. He sees 
that all are poor, weak humans together, each 
acting his role in the drama of probation, under 
his lidless eye whose judgment alone is final, 
and who notes, not the folds of the drapery, nor 
the pose of the head, but the thought, the spirit, 
the inner life. He knows that humanity is too 
great to be cramped down to the petty outside 
measurements that prevail among weak-headed 
snobs. 

" Is there for honest poverty 
That hangs his head, and a' that ? 
The coward slave, — we pass him by, 
We dare be poor, for a' that ! 
For a' that, and a J that, 
Our toils obscure, and a' that ; 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp ; 
The man 's the gowd Tor a' that. 

What tho' on hamely fare we dine, 

Wear hodden-grey, and a' that. 

Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, 

A man 's a man for a' that. 

For a' that, and a' that, 

Their tinsel show, and a' that; 

The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, 

Is king o' men, for a' that. 

A prince can make a belted knight, 

A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 

But an honest man ? s aboon his might, 

Guid faith he mauna fa' that! 

For a' that, and a' that. 

Their dignities and a' that, 



142 DIAMOND DUST. 

The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth 
Are higher ranks than a' that. 

Then let us pray that come it may, 

As come it will, for a' that, 

That sense and worth o'er a' the earth 

May bear the gree, and a' that. 

For a' that, and a' that, 

It 's coming yet, for a' that, 

That man to man the wide world o'er 

Shall brother be, for a' that." 

Carlyle's description of Bums' s visit to Edin- 
burgh illustrates the genuine humility and manli- 
ness of the man who believed in the essential 
worth of manhood. 

' ' This month he is a ruined peasant, his 
wages seven pounds a year, and these gone from 
him ; next month he is in the blaze of rank and 
beauty, handing jeweled duchesses down to din- 
ner, the cynosure of all eyes ! We admire much 
the way in which Burns met all this. Tranquil, 
unastonished, not abashed, not inflated ; neither 
awkwardness nor affectation, he feels that he there 
is the man Robert Burns ; that ' the rank is but 
the guinea's stamp, that the celebrity is but the 
candle light which will show what man, not in 
the least make him a better or other man ! Alas, 
it may readily, unless he look to it, make him a 
worse man, a wretched, inflated wind-bag, inflated 
till he burst and become a dead lion." 



COURTEOUSNESS. 143 

Why should we cower and cringe before those 
who may have had bett&r food and clothing, 
higher-priced teachers, and more leisure than 
we ? By God's standard our fare and our rai- 
ment, our lessons and wisdom may be by far the 
costliest and the best. The world's methods of 
measurement are all wrong. Let us learn to live 
by God's rule. 

There have been various christenings of that 
lack of independence that makes plain people ill 
at ease in the presence of those who seem to be 
of more consequence. It is tenderly ycleped 
timidity, or bashfulness — manvaise honte in hon- 
est French. 

However it may be disguised, it is execrable, 
and betrays a weak character. The man who take? 
on the crawling order of conduct, not quite sure 
in certain society that he has a right to be in 
the world at all, is certainly deficient in self- 
respect. He is a coward, and that means that he 
would be a tyrant if he happened to get an up- 
ward tilt. Coward and tyrant are interchangea- 
ble terms, because both are based upon a wrong 
notion of the worth that inheres in a Christ-re- 
deemed being, whether he be wrapped in calico 
or satin, in coarse muscle or fine, in abrupt man- 
ners or delicate address. 

I know a man who sidles in and out of a 



144 DIAMOND DUST. 

room to take up the less space, like Dickens's Mr. 
Chillip. He sits down in the most out of the 
way corner, tucks his feet under his chair, folds 
up his little frame like a pocket-lantern, and slips 
in his uncertain sentences with a wheedling sim- 
per, as though it was the height of superlative 
goodness that permits him to open his unworthy 
lips. It is impossible to draw from him a straight- 
forward opinion even upon no more complicated 
a question than the state of the weather. He 
means to be truthful, but let one ask him if it 
isn't raining; "Why — yes — he guesses — to be 
sure — you know — well, it must be — it is," though 
a blink of sunshine through a blind that very 
minute contradicts his wriggling answer. 

A dozen others who are not one whit more 
sure of themselves, don a brazen mask, and try 
to brace up by putting on independent airs. 
They are like the silly people who starve them- 
selves in their thread-bare attempts at ' ' keeping 
up appearances." They bluster, and stamp, and 
talk loud, and stalk through the room, lords of the 
manor surely ! What do they care for rules ? Eti- 
quette, indeed ! Superior to all such twaddle! 
After all their bravado they are not much unlike 
the scared little man who smirks in your face so 
provokingly, 

I know another, of humble parentage and 



COURTEOUSNESS. 145 

narrow culture, a "working man," and withal 
a gentlemen. He is at home in any society be- 
cause he is not ashamed to be his plain, excel- 
lent self, faultlessly polite, because dignifiedly 
self-forgetting and kind. He is no doubt inno- 
cently ignorant of some of the flourishes that pass 
for politeness with shoddy gentility, yet there is 
not a requirement of genuine courtesy that he 
does not understand intuitively, through his com- 
mon sense, his self-respect, and his wish to make 
others happy. 

Politeness is only a pleasant name for justice, 
and one can but be just if he has ample Christian 
charity. No one with the tender love of the Re- 
deemer pulsating through his soul can be other- 
wise than kindly just. 

This genuine courtesy is beautifully amplified 
in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. 
The love that beareth all things, hopeth all things, 
endureth all things, does not flame up at every 
slight. It remembers that when one seems care- 
less and negligent of the attentions that he ought 
to bestow, it is not impossible that a secret agony 
is gnawing his heart like the vulture at Prome- 
theus's liver. It does not shy those who seem 
distant and indifferent. It gives them the ben- 
efit of the doubt, and determines, at all events, 
to keep its own temper generous and genial. 



146 DIAMOND DUST. 

Ten to one its affability will win its way into the 
confidence and warmth of the most hopeless and 
unpromising reticence. Even churlishness will 
have to give way before its quiet radiance. 

Courtesy belongs to civilization. Among sav- 
ages its demands are met, in the main, if each 
lets his neighbor's scalp alone, and keeps his 
tomahawk out of the other's brain. As the so- 
cial network grows complicated and interlaced, 
courtesy must keep pace with the need of inter- 
course, making it agreeable. It is of practical 
use in every-day life. Like the oil that lubricates 
the machinery, or the rubber pad upon the axle, 
it eases the jolts of the rough, hard-going cir- 
cumstances that are posting us through the 
world. 

Courtesy is like the spring check upon a brake, 
causing the train to stop by littles and not w r ith 
a jerk that would send the passengers flying out 
of the windows or up through the roof. With 
due attention to the suaviter in modo one can use 
the fortiter in re with safety. It is the iron hand 
in the velvet glove that grasps firmly and with- 
out harm to the subject. 

At best this is an out-of-joint world. All 
are burdened and weary. Courtesy lightens the 
loads and medicines the weariness. It is like 
fresh flowers, cooling drinks, and soft music in a 



CO UR TEO USNESS. r 4 7 

sick-room. Though it may not have healing 
power in itself, it soothes the worn nerves, and 
prepares the way for more potent, remedial 
agents. 

Much of our suffering is unreal. We are like 
children who shiver in the dark for fear of In- 
dians that are beyond the Mississippi. We con- 
jure up wraiths of possible trouble and have the 
gloom about us all a-mutter with dread may- 
happens. 

A nervous man's note is protested a dozen 
times in his imagination when it is once really in 
danger. A fidgety woman's child falls into the 
river twenty times in her fancy, and she suf- . 
fers all the agony of having him drown, except 
the certainty, while the little fellow is having a 
merry time at making mud pies on the bank. We 
suffer as certainly and sometimes as keenly from 
these unreal sorrows as if they were actual ; and 
we need kindly patience and forbearance to stim- 
ulate and strengthen the mind to more healthful 
action. It is enough to drive one insane to be 
treated with abruptness and severity by some 
wise, coolheaded superior who sees the fallacy of 
the foreboding and is out of patience because we 
are so foolish. 

When great griefs and bereavements come 
upon us and we stagger and grope through the 



T48 DIAMOND DUST. 

loneliness of the empty rooms, the "small, sweet 
courtesies" make us forget for the moment 

" The silence 'gainst which we dare not cry, 
That aches around us like a strong disease and new." 

We ozve all people courteousness, be they black 
or white, base-born or high-bred, possible or real 
disciples of our Lord. 

The flower lifting its bright face by the way- 
side owes me as much of beauty and fragrance 
as the Good Father has given me an order for, 
and the bird owes me a daily installment of heart- 
helping song. I owe every man, woman, and 
child with whom I have contact a word, a look, 
or a thought of kindness. 

Many of the well-dressed, pleasant-faced peo- 
ple that we meet are carrying about "a lumpish, 
leaden, aching thing in place of a heart." Do 
we not owe them sweet charity? Do we go 
shouting and stamping through a hospital where 
men and women are lying with aching heads and 
throbbing nerves ? 

Christ teaches us to care for all who suffer, 
hence genuine Christians obey the apostolic in- 
junction, "Be courteous," as certainly as they 
confess their sins and pray for pardon. 

True courteousness is an outgrowth of piety. 
Said a sharp-eyed worldling of a professor of 
religion, "You can't make me believe that that 



CO UR TEO USNESS. 1 4 9 

man is a Christian. He is too rude; Christians 
have better manners.'' If there were no social 
ban upon boorishness, God's tender sympathies 
in the soul would make one courteous. 

Nowhere is politeness more necessary than 
in the church, where gentle-souled Christians 
meet to worship the kind God. 

I have seen a strange thing under the sun — 
strange and sad. A drunkard's wife, weary with 
the wretchedness and wrangling of her hut, has 
gone to God's house in vague hope of getting 
help to bear her burdens. Finding herself so 
shabby among the comfortable Christians, she 
has slipped into a pew, when a high-headed dis- 
ciple of the crucified Galilean has driven her 
from the seat with a stony stare or a haughty 
gesture. Then there has echoed through my 
soul the cry from Calvary, "They know not 
what they do!" Better, a thousand times better, 
to go down into the sea with a millstone about 
the neck than to offend one of Christ's little ones. 

I have seen a Magdalen upon whose heart 
had fallen the softening rain of God. As she 
went forth to seek a better life, she was met by 
a woman who drew aside to avoid contact with 
the penitent, and whose scourge of silent scorn 
turned the wretched feet again toward hell ! 
The blood of that woman's baleful perishing 



150 DIAMOND DUST, 

could but rest upon the head of her Christian 
sister! 

We must give to all kindly courtesy, for we 
may never know their sore need ; but, above 
every thing, we must be courteous toward those 
who are in our own homes. Nowhere else is the 
lack of politeness, kindness, considerateness, so 
keenly felt. 

Weary with the cares and worry of life, we 
rest in our homes, having laid by our armor; so 
it is easy to gall us with rough words and coarse, 
unkind acts. 

Incivilities in the home are like sand in the 
eyes, and gravel in the shoes. No wonder they 
who have only sour looks and cross words where 
they ought to receive loving sympathy and care, 
are easily lured to destruction. 

Some people treat casual acquaintances with 
more courtesy than they use toward their near- 
est friends. One-half of the incivilities they 
fling right and left, every hour, when free from 
the restraint of the public eye, if indulged else- 
where, would destroy every friendship they have 
outside the enduring home bond. 

Savages sometimes tie an enemy to a tree as 
a target for bow and arrow practice; and yet 
there is a more cruel barbarism even in civilized 
homes. You may bind one to yourself with 



CO UR TEO USA 7 ESS. 1 5 1 

promises of lifelong love and cherishing, and 
then vent upon the luckless head your superflu- 
ous cruelty. By and by you will be unable to do 
your outside work, and you will need the rest 
and tenderness that are found nowhere this side 
heaven, except in a good home. Then the love 
that should have helped you bear the weariness 
and infirmities of age is scarred and withered 
and dead. No upbraidings, it is what it is on 
account of your own roughness and unkindness. 

Some treat their children almost brutally, be- 
cause the poor, helpless things are in their 
power. They forget that the harsh, cutting, 
bitter words that they throw around so reck- 
lessly, day by day, will be paid back, by and by, 
with compound interest. When one is old and 
crippled and broken, his children may do pre- 
cisely as he did when he had the vigor, and they 
the helplessness. They will be respectful enough 
before folks, too proud to be caught using rude- 
ness toward the decrepit old father; but when 
they are alone with him, if they have a touch 
of indigestion, or a business bother, then see 
how the hard, hateful words rattle about his 
helpless head. Does he recognize his own 
severe sayings of long years before? Whatso- 
ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 

Some parents love their children violently. 



152 DIAMOND DUST. 

They will do any thing for them but restrain 
their own savage instincts; and so, unwittingly, 
they develop in them a harshness and hateful- 
ness that will plant with thorns the path toward - 
the sunset. 

Children have rights that parents are bound 
to respect. They are as certainly entitled to 
courtesy and kindness as are parents. The in- 
justices practiced upon them will be repaid by 
them when they come to power. 

Who does not love to recall the pretty 
Quaker home in " Uncle Tom's Cabin/' with 
the gentle mother directing the merry, young 
people with her kind, "Hadn't thee better do 
so and so? 1 ' Where in this wide world is courtesy 
so beautiful or so useful as in the household? 

Sometimes brothers and sisters are more 
ashamed of a caress than of a cross word. If 
they were caught hurling at each other a biting 
criticism, they would not be half as much em- 
barrassed as they would over a kind com- 
mendation. 

I was taking vocal music lessons once with a 
young lady of her brother. They were pleasant 
young people, and they thought enough of each 
other, yet I noticed that he used little incivili- 
ties toward her that would have finished my 
lessons at once if he had ventured to address 



CO UR TEO USNESS. J 5 3 

me in the same manner. I said to him one day, 
after one of his usual sharp cuts at her dullness, 
"You don't like your sister as well as you do 
me?" He stared a moment. "Of course I do. 
I think enough of her. Why?" "Oh, noth- 
ing, only you never scold me when I make a 
blunder. You smooth it over very nicely; but 
if Lizzie sings wrong, you say so sharply, ' Now, 
what did you sing that way for? I've told you 
better than that more than a dozen times.' '" 

Many a girl whose brothers w T ould do any 
thing and every thing for her happiness except 
treat her with the civility they are ready to use 
toward every other young lady, is driven into an 
unfortunate marriage hoping to find that respect 
and attention that we all prize so highly in the 
home. 

And ten chances to one she fails in her mat- 
rimonial venture. There are men who visit 
every little domestic misliap and delinquency, the 
loss of a button, a rip in a glove, an accident to 
the morning paper, with an avalanche of sharp 
words as bitter and biting as a March hail-storm. 
Some put more gentleness into the voice when 
they address any living being whom it is to their 
interest to please, than they use in speaking to 
the wife of a dozen years. When the back of 
the dear public is turned they do not hesitate to 



154 DIAMOND DUST. 

practice toward her a thousand little abruptnesses, 
any one of which, before marriage, would have 
made a decided change in their relations. 

Not every woman is so fortunate as the 
Scotch lassie who, standing before the minister 
with her laddie, declined to promise obedience. 
After two or three unsuccessful attempts to ad- 
just the matter satisfactorily, the clergyman hes- 
itated. " Ne'er mind," said Sandy; "I maun 
see to the ' obey ' if there be strength i' this guid 
right arm." " Sae that 's to be the tune," quoth 
the bonny lass; "weel, then, guid day," and 
she left him to seek a spouse that he could gov- 
ern with less trouble. 

Many a man who would scorn to lay the 
weight of a finger upon his wife in temper, shows 
upon small occasions of annoyance a petulance 
that hurts worse than a blow. Many a woman 
who is ready to sacrifice to the utmost for her 
husband's comfort, denies him the kindness of 
address and manner that she recognizes it her 
duty to bestow upon all besides. 

Only at home, where courteousness is most 
needed, can it be properly learned. Let boys as 
well as girls be taught genuine politeness. There 
is no reason why "that boy" should be per- 
mitted to be a boor, while all pains are taken 
to make his sister a lady. If she needs gentle- 






COURTEOUSNESS. 155 

ness and self-control for the work of life, so does 
he. The day is passing by when men are to be 
as coarse and rough as savages with a little awk- 
ward polish for court occasions, while women 
must be always obsequious and amiable. In the 
better time there will be no abatement of the best 
ideal of womanly self-sacrifice and meekness, and 
yet the role of angelhood will not be monopolized 
by her ; it will be understood that it is also good 
for men to "be courteous," and to "be kind 
one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one 
another, even as God for Christ's sake hath for- 
given" them; "With all lowliness and meek- 
ness, with long suffering, forbearing one another 
in love." 

Courtesy must be taught like music, begin- 
ning as early as possible. If you begin to teach 
your daughter music when she is nearly grown 
it will take a deal of practice to make her even 
a passable player. But let her tiptoe up to the 
piano and strike the keys as soon as she can 
stand alone, and she will grow up, other things 
being equal, its mistress. 

If w T e would have our children courteous, we 
must begin with them early, and teach them by 
example as well as by dictation. 

Gentle manners are beautiful, and there is 
always power in beauty. The touch of the sun- 



156 DIAMOND DUST. 

beam moves the granite column far more surely 
than does the wrench of the tornado. Harmo- 
nies of color, rhythm of movement, and melody 
of voice sway the .soul with surer strength than 
can the force of reason or the grip of law. Let 
us be no longer afraid of what is beautiful be- 
cause the children of this world, always wiser 
than the children of light, have prostituted it to 
base purposes. Let us conscript all beauty and 
elegance, and give it Christian baptism, and set 
it at work to help on the right. 

Under the old typical law the firstlings and 
those without spot or blemish were used in sac- 
rifice. Time will come when the best music need 
not be sought in the opera, the best art where it 
represents pagan or Christian idolatry, the best 
poetry in the service of Bacchus, Venus, or 
Mars. " The earth is Jehovah's, and the fullness 
thereof," and the day is dawning when the long 
arrears are to be collected. 

The beautiful must be set free from its old 
associations, and, with the chrism of Christ upon 
its forehead, it must be wedded to the true and 
the good. Then may he who embodies all har- 
mony and beauty and excellence reign over a 
regenerated realm. 



MY NEIGHBOR. 1 57 



WHEN the lawyer would test Christ's teach- 
ing upon moral obligation, he asked what 
he should do to inherit eternal life. The Savior 
responded by questioning him upon the "Mosaic 
Law." The question was quite in the lawyer's 
line, and in reply he epitomized the Jewish code 
in an able manner. He gathered in one state- 
ment all our duties to God, and in another our 
duties to our fellow beings. 

He showed a fine analytic as well as synthetic 
power in stating, not the common frame-work of 
the duty, but its underlying principle. "Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and 
with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself." 

We may imagine that the Master's keen eye 
was fastened upon the face of the comfortable, 
self-righteous lawyer, and the word slid from his 
lips touching like a lance of steel the core of the 
man's egotism, "This do and thou shalt live." 
Stung by an awakened conscience and "willing 



158 DIAMOND DUST, 

to justify himself," he asked a little petulantly, 
as we may suppose, "Who is my neighbor ?" 

The Savior, who always used consummate 
skill in dealing with human nature, did not an- 
swer directly. As a Jew he would have replied, 
"One of your race, or nation, 01 creed." As 
the Son of man he must give a broader scope to 
the obligation. But first he must, if possible, 
disarm the lawyer's prejudice, that the truth, 
which so clear a thinker was able to apprehend, 
might also be received into his heart and make 
him free. So the Master told a story, the dra- 
matic interest of which would take the attention 
of the other from its personal point till the prin- 
ciple it was meant to illustrate had been accepted. 
It was about a Jew who fell among thieves and 
was neglected by the priest and the Levite — the 
representatives of religion and learning, and cared 
for by the Samaritan, a man of impure blood 
and corrupt creed. In conclusion the Master 
asked which was neighbor unto him that fell 
among the thieves? The lawyer occupied with 
the principle involved, gave a straightforward an- 
swer, "He that showed mercy on him." Then 
the lance of truth touched again his sordid soul, 
" Go and do thou likewise." 

The lesson of social obligation taught in this 
parable may be formulated something in this 



MY NEIGHBOR. 1 5 9 

way: The knowledge of need and the ability to 
meet it lay upon one a responsibility commensu- 
rate with his power to serve. 

It is not optional with us to help those who 
need our aid. There is an obligation upon us 
as sacred and binding as it is possible for any 
to be, because it is one that grows out of the 
nature of our relation to others, and it is laid 
upon us by God himself. 

Paul said, "I am a debtor both to the Greeks 
and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to 
the unwise." He has been much lauded for his 
generous self-giving, as if it were all gratuitous, 
unconstrained benevolence. He, however, with 
a clearer insight into the relation of men to 
men, regarded himself as simply discharging an 
obligation laid upon him by the knowledge of 
the danger of sinners and of their possible sal- 
vation made plain to him by the love of Christ 
which was shed abroad in his heart by the Holy 
Ghost. He says, "The love of Christ constrain- 
eth us." We suppose him to mean that he had 
been brought into such sympathy with the Re- 
deemer's purpose to save all people that he had 
to live by the law of that love and knowledge, 
doing all that was possible to help every human 
being that he could reach. He is simply paying 
a debt that he owed to Greek and barbarian, 



160 DIAMOND DUST. 

bond and free. There was no merit in all those 
toils and travels, perils of waters and of robbers, 
shipwrecks and persecutions. He owed human- 
ity that debt of service. 

If he had been asked if this obligation was 
special, resting upon him and not' upon others, 
he would have replied, "No man liveth to 
himself." 

The warp and woof of our indebtedness are 
interwoven with the tissue of every other human 
life. None of us can cut himself loose from the 
rest and say, * * I stand alone, owing no man 
aught." To every soul that needs our help, and 
that we may be able to aid, we are bound by a 
chain as unbreakable as that which holds the 
planets in their orbits. 

We are debtors to our families, our commu- 
nities, and the race. 

We confess judgment when the first item of 
this claim is presented. Our very selfishness 
prompts us to care for our own families. If we 
neglect them, we know that we are planting 
thorns in the paths our feet must tread in the 
old years, when our steps are tottering and 
uncertain. 

The recognition of our debt decreases in 
proportion to our distance from those to whom 
we owe service. It is like the rays of a lamp 



M V NEIGHB OR. 1 6 1 

diverging and growing less in power with each 
yard of space they traverse. 

The philanthropic radius is circumscribed 
with some good people, reaching hardly beyond 
their immediate vicinage. Their daily prayer, if 
freely translated, would be little more than, 

"Bless me and my wife, 
Son John and his wife, 
Us four 
And no more." 

That we may bring our families to the broad- 
est charity, the best life, the horizon of our 
sympathies must be widened. 

Besides this home care we must recognize 
our debt of obligation to the community. 

This caring only for those whom we can see 
and hear and touch, forgetting our obligation to 
all others, is a little as if one should pay his 
shoemaker promptly because he happens to live 
within sound of the man's hammer, ignoring the 
claims of all creditors who chance to live a few 
blocks away. 

Some reach a little farther, taking in "our 
Church," "our town." Others have a sense of 
obligation that vitalizes those vague abstractions, 
"the government," "our country" — patriotism 
they call the sentiment. 

If we search carefully enough w r e may find 
1 1 



1 62 DIAMOND DUST. 

the root of most of these benevolent impulses 
in selfishness. Unless our friends are respecta- 
able and good, we are disgraced by their mis- 
deeds. Unless our community has a reputation 
for morality, our real estate depreciates in value. 
Unless our country is prosperous, all our per- 
sonal interests are in peril. 

Only the few who have stood beside the all- 
loving Christ upon the mount of God can send 
their thought away east, west, north, and 
south to all races and tribes, peoples and kin- 
dreds, understanding that they are bound to all, 
no matter how uncouth in life, how rough in 
speech, how low in civilization, by the unbreak- 
able bond of human brotherhood, Christian ob- 
ligation. Only those divinely illuminated souls, 
looking away from that height of spiritual vision, 
acknowledge that they owe a debt of service to 
each wild Bedouin sweeping across his desert 
waste, each Esquimaux shivering in his snow- 
hut, each naked negro panting under the equator, 
each Indian rajah and Chinese cooly, each Si- 
berian serf and American freedman, each drunk- 
ard staggering toward perdition, each lost woman 
hiding in her den of infamy, each vagabond child 
thrice orphaned and desolate. 

Whether we apprehend the obligation or not, 
we owe a debt to all our race. None are so far 



MY NEIGHB OR. 163 

beneath us but we can go down to their neces- 
sity; none so far above us but we can reach 
them to pay the debt. 

All are in want. All suffer in their threefold 
life from its very beginning. Invisible harpies 
hover about the vestibule of being, and attack 
tooth and nail every little helpless human. The 
few who fight their way up through the multi- 
form maladies of the first years, find themselves, 
even before Time claims his license to pull them 
to pieces, grievously hurt in all their triple life. 
It would puzzle the angels to find one who was 
sound even in body. 

The whimsical, rickety, patched up old tene- 
ment is usually an exponent of the wretched life 
under its miserable roof. So the unsound body 
represents, not unfairly, the general pitiful mental 
condition. There are as few in complete health 
of mind as of body. 

We use gentle names in speaking of intellect- 
ual unsoundness, for we do not relish awkward 
plainness in regard to our own ailments. We 
have "low spirits," "the blues," "hypochon- 
dria," when blunders, misjudgments, and evil 
surmisings indicate that the mental machinery is 
getting out of repair. When the disease has 
reached a given point, the general safety de-_ 
mands that the patient be shut within stone 



1 64 DIAMOND DUST. 

walls, subjected to careful sanitary treatment, 
and put in a strait-jacket. 

We pity the poor wretches who have lost 
their reason as if it were an unusual calamity, 
yet we can not walk a block in any town with- 
out looking into the blank faces of fools who can 
not reason, the sharp faces of bigots who will 
not, and the close faces of knaves who dare not, 
use their reasoning powers. 

Apish vanity, foxy cunning, wolfish cruelty, 
hyena-like jealousy, with all their kith and kin 
of brute passions and beastly appetites, lie in 
wait to mar and maim and poison the soul. 
You may wade through miles of people upon 
city pavements without finding one who is free 
from physical disease; so you may travel leagues 
without finding one unhurt in mind, perfectly 
sound in spirit. 

Moral infirmities and maladies are even more 
common and pitiful than those of body or mind. 
Multitudes have felt the touch of the Great 
Physician, but very few of us have permitted 
him to bring us to even our own scant notions 
of moral health and vigor. 

We dislike to look upon ulcers, goiter, idiocy, 
misshapements, physical and mental. If our 
eyes were opened to see our own moral deform- 
ities and those of the people about us, we 



MY NEIGHBOR. 165 

should be driven to a hermit's cell to escape the 
painful sights of every day. 

There is more tragedy in every life than was 
ever brought out upon the stage. Every feast 
has its skeleton. Under the peals of merriment 
and shouts of triumph may be heard the rattling 
menace of its fleshless fingers, the sullen chatter 
of its lipless teeth. Every human being, unless 
healed by the good Christ, is, by the witness of 
God, ''full of wounds and bruises and putrefy- 
ing sores;" and the worst hurts, the deepest 
gashes, are hid most secretly. They must be 
sought out, if one would help the sufferer. 

You meet a man in society who looks robust 
enough to relish a good dinner and digest it sat- 
isfactorily. You exchange with him the com- 
monplaces of the day, and then you go your 
way, like the priest and the Levite, leaving him 
in his utter darkness to stagger and grope and 
clutch after the rope of faith that has been 
wrenched from him by human treachery. 

You are seated for an hour's talk with a lady. 
The worn pleasantries of chitchat are tossed 
back and forth gayly enough. If you would 
listen so wisely as to catch the hard whisper of 
her soul's dire need, the smile would fade from 
your eye, and the jest hurry back from your lip; 
for before you is not a merry-hearted woman, 



1 66 DIAMOND DUST. 

full of life and hope, but a wretched soul wrest- 
ling with fearful doubts of man's truth and 
God's pity. 

Perhaps but little was required of you for the 
helping of these needy people. Only the cup of 
cold water. Not an exhortation nor a sermon, 
possibly not even an uttered prayer — only to give 
the bewildered soul a look into a pair of steady, 
kind, honest eyes, or the grasp of a clean hand — 
yet it might have held the wavering faith, till 
the courage had regained its strength. A world 
better if you had not been born, than for you to 
be delinquent in these simple debts — this throw- 
ing a rope to the shipwrecked. 

A man is driving to market along a surf- 
beaten shore. In the last night's gloom ruffian 
winds and merciless waves seized a good ship and 
dragged her down to the cavernous depths. In 
the cold gray morning men and women are toss- 
ing in the breakers, clinging to spars and 
boards, and crying for help. What does our 
comfortable marketer do ? Does he spring from 
his wagon and use every effort to get men, and 
ropes, and boats before the poor, drowning peo- 
ple are swallowed up by the hungry sea? Oh, 
no. He drives on, whistling a careless tune, and 
busying himself upon the probable gain from his 
load. What cares he for the perishing wretches? 



M V NEIGIIB OK. 1 6 7 

Why, be does not know one of them even by 
name. He left his own safe in their homes. 
Lynch him ? Not so fast. Execrable murderer 
as he is, he will live to a fair age if one who is 
without guilt must cast at him the first stone. 

Victor Hugo in M Les Misei'ables" makes his 
bishop regard himself as having wronged the 
poor, because he bought comforts for himself 
with the money that he might have used in buy- 
ing them bread, and Jean Valjean as no worse 
in stealing the articles than he in keeping their 
value from the starving. 

The French philosopher may have over- 
wrought a trifle his picture in his attempt to make 
us see our obligation to the poor, yet John Wes- 
ley was about as extravagant when he said, " If 
I die worth ten pounds men may call me a vil- 
lain. '' Hugo's sad eyes have been fixed upon 
the maelstrom where the unfortunate are drawn 
down to death, unpitied and unhelped, till his 
brain may not be steady enough to work out the 
problem of their rescue ; yet he lays a stout hand 
upon every man's shoulder, and with the peremp- 
toriness of justice he charges him with unpaid 
indebtedness ; worse, with the embezzlement of 
widow's crusts and pauper's rags. In the " cruel 
social juggle " he turns his sharp gaze this way 
and that for help, but in vain. Another, whose 



1 68 DIAMOND DUST. 

heart is no more deeply touched with a sense of 
wrong, but upon whose eyes God's light has been 
poured, jnay lead us directly to Christ, the em- 
bodiment of unselfish love, as the one cure of 
this terrible plague. 

With the increase of knowledge comes an in- 
crease of responsibility. We are living in an ear- 
nest, restless time. Many "run to and fro, and 
knowledge is increased." Steam navigation, rail- 
roads, telegraphs have made all nations our next- 
door neighbors. The Celestial Empire has been 
towed across the sea and anchored to our West- 
ern coast. It is even emptying upon our coun- 
try its surplus population. We have already in 
the United States two hundred thousand Chi- 
namen. 

It is an unambitious college that has not a 
Japanese name in its catalogue. One can hardly 
meet a parlor full of comfortably intelligent peo- 
ple without hearing one say, "I saw the like of 
that in Shanghai," and another, "We bought 
that in Calcutta." 

The dark side of the world is rolling up 
toward the light. We adjust our postal and tel- 
egraphic glasses, and peer across the narrowing 
Pacific. We talk over at the breakfast-table what 
the East Indians were about last evening. For- 
merly those great lands full of queer people were 



MY NEIGHBOR. 1 69 

all terra incognita. The shreds of humanity 
packed away in them were so unlike ourselves in 
all their modes of life and thought, so far from 
our notions of what is essential to the species we 
hardly regarded them as human. But we have 
come to know that those immense masses of peo- 
ple, crowded and crushed together, as much alike 
as the individuals of a flock of blackbirds, and as 
meaningless in their jargons — mere census items, 
too numerous for counting — we have come at last 
to understand that they are hoping, fearing, lov- 
ing, hating, sinning, sorrowing human souls, each 
redeemed by the blood of the Son of God, each 
capable of boundless development in good, each 
as dear to the Lord Christ as are the people by 
whose side we kneel at the home altar, or the 
communion rail. 

We have come to know the pitiful mistakes 
of their civilization, how they grope for temple 
doors in their self-made darkness, and clutch 
each other's throats. We have seen how great 
souls among them, Confucius, and Zoroaster, and 
Mohammed, held aloft their flickering torches, 
only making the gloom more dense, while the 
people stumbled this way and that, sinking 
deeper into the mire at each step. 

We have looked into their living places. We 
see them buying and selling their wives — their 



170 DIAMOND DUST, 

pride and passion trampling upon the very hearts 
of those whose love and care ought to make for 
them good homes. We hear the gurgle in the 
throats of the little daughters that they drown. 
We hear the moans of the old mothers pushed 
off into the Ganges, or left to the tender mercies 
of the wild beasts of the jungle. We know their 
misery. They have become our neighbors. We 
can not shake off" the responsibility of sharing 
with them the light of our clearer day, the bless- 
ings of our Christian civilization. 

Our obligation is increased also by the in- 
crease of our ability, Christianity is the main- 
spring of improvement in art, science, literature, 
civil and international polity ; and with each 
added facility for commerce and travel there 
come new duties. Christianity and progress are 
synonymous. With the increase of Christian 
light there is added ability to bring things to 
pass, and with the increased power comes added 
responsibility for those less favored. 

We can translate Bibles, and prepare and send 
teachers to the needy abroad as never before. 

Instead of its taking months to make a copy 
of the Scriptures and months more for a sailing 
vessel to creep across the sea with its precious 
cargo, we can take the paper from the mill and 
the ink from the factory, and in a few days our 



M V NEIGHB OR. 1 7 1 

ship has steamed around the world leaving at 
each port the Word of Life. 

Fifty years ago it was a rare thing to find 
one who could read an Oriental language. Now, 
classes meet in our parlors hunting for Hebrew 
roots as an afternoon recreation, and our colleges 
turn out readers of Sanskrit by the dozen. It 
will not be long till a cued Chinaman or a nim- 
ble-witted Japanese professor will be teaching 
Oriental monosyllables at each of our educational 
centers. Already in a national university in 
Japan is there a professorship of moral philos- 
ophy filled by a Christian missionary, who uses 
the New Testament as his text-book in ethics. 
If the sense of responsibility in the Christian 
Church had gone beyond that of the apostolic 
era in the ratio of added ability, long ere this the 
world would have been evangelized. 

During Paid s thirty-three itinerant years South- 
western Asia and Southern Europe were dotted 
with churches. Not a city of consequence in 
the civilized world was left unvisited. Compa- 
nies of men and women fished from the slums of 
heathen sensualism became the primitive Church, 
to whose purity and excellence we are never 
tired of referring. 

When Paul was in Corinth, writing to the 
Church at Rome, he told them that he must 



172 DIAMOND DUST. 

carry to Jerusalem a benefaction for the poor 
Christians there from the Macedonians. After 
that journey he hoped to go to Spain and visit 
his Roman friends by the way. It was no small 
matter in those days of slow, unsafe sailing to go 
from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. 
It was as if one of us should write to a Church 
in Bombay, "I must carry a gift from the Bos- 
tonians to the poor saints at Athens. After I 
have performed that duty, I hope to go to Pe- 
king to preach the Gospel there, and I will stop 
and see you in Bombay on my journey thither." 

If the sense of obligation to all men crowded 
the apostle to the Gentiles through all manner 
of perils and afflictions, how ought our added 
knowledge and ability to urge us onward in this 
work of the world's conquest for Christ. If the 
Church in these days were moved by that prim- 
itive zeal, every one of the dark-souled millions 
would have a knowledge of Christ's salvation 
within a decade. 

In giving the ignorant masses, at home or 
abroad, a knowledge of salvation by Christ, we 
help them in all their hurt threefold life. 

Christianity establishes not only Churches and 
Sabbath-schools, but it provides asylums for the 
infirm, hospitals for the sick, care for the aged, 
homes for the homeless, friends for the friend- 



MY NEIGHBOR. 173 

less, schools for the ignorant, health, peace, 
prosperity for all. 

I might fill my house with the shivering poor, 
and it would become only what Christianity has 
taught every city and county to build — an alms- 
house or hospital. If I give those same poor 
people a knowledge of Christ's power to save 
from sensuality and vice, I make them self-sup- 
porting. Their sins are the one luxury that they 
can not afford. What they spend in intoxicants, 
physical and mental, would give them an inde- 
pendence, with ample medicine and care for 
their illnesses. 

The religion of the Lord Jesus teaches us to 
crowd this common evangelism while we provide 
amply and generously for those who must be 
cared for by general public charity. 

We can meet our obligation to our neighbors 
only by giving them a knowledge of Christ's 
power to make them pure and free, strong and 
noble. As the greater includes the less, this will 
be a medicine for all the ills that infest humanity, 
a lifting of the curse from our sorrowing race. 

When we meet our ordinary financial obliga- 
tions we take a receipt acknowledging the fact. 
We need expect no credit on this world's books 
for the expenditure of time and money and 
strength in paying the debts that we call benev- 



174 DIAMOND DUST, 

olent. Indeed, so sadly are beliefs and notions 
of right jumbled, we will pass for fanatics and 
fools, if we do not spend our substance in add- 
ing to our own magnificence, rather than in be- 
stowing upon others as God wills. 

We can do this work properly only when we 
have reference to the record above, careless whether 
the eyes about us beam kindly or dart upon us 
scathing contempt and hate. The unslumbering 
Eye notes even the cup of cold water given in 
his name. 

God never forgets. He will not pass lightly 
over any neglect of obligation. "My lord car- 
dinal," said Anne of Austria to Richelieu, ''God 
does not pay at the end of each week, but at 
the last he pays" 

He will hold us to the uttermost farthing if 
we fail of our duty to his poor, be they sufferers 
in estate or body, in mind or spirit. "Then 
shall the King say also unto them on the left- 
hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlast- 
ing fire, prepared for th£ devil and his angels; 
for I was a-hungered, and ye gave me no meat: 
I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink : I was 
a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and 
ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye 
visited me not. Then shall they also answer 
him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee a-hungered, 



M Y NEIGHB OR. 175 

or a-thirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in 
prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then 
shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto 
you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the 
least of these, ye did it not to me." 

So wonderful is his condescension and tender- 
ness of care, he will enter upon the Record and 
apportion the eternal reward as if each act of 
unselfish love and care of the miserable here had 
been done to himself. "Then shall the King 
say unto them on his right-hand, Come, ye 
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre- 
pared for you from the foundation of the world: 
for I was a-hungered, and ye gave me meat: I 
was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a 
stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye 
clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was 
in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall 
the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when 
saw we thee a-hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, 
and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a 
stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed 
thee? or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, 
and came unto thee? And the King shall an- 
swer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, 
inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these my brethren, ye have done it 
unto me." 



IT 6 DIAMOND DUST. 

Lowell's knight, in his vision, found this 
glorious truth — the same that the Master taught 
in the parable of the Good Samaritan: 

" For Christ's sweet sake I beg an alms." 

"Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, 
The leper lank as the rain-blanched bone, 
That cowers beside him, a thing as lone 
And white as the ice isles of Northern seas, 
In the desolate horror of his disease. 

And Sir Launfal said, 'I behold in thee 
An image of Him who died on the tree. 
Mild Mary's Son acknowledge me, 
Behold through him I give to thee.' 

Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes, 

And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he 

Remembered in what a haughtier guise 

He had flung an alms to leprosie ; 

When he girt his young life up in gilded mail 

And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 

The heart within him was ashes and dust; 

He parted in twain his single crust, 

He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink 

And gave the leper to eat and drink. 

'Twas a moldy crust of coarse brown bread, 

'T was water out of a wooden bowl, 

Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 

And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. 

As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, 

A light shone round about the place; 

The leper no longer crouched at his side 

But stood before him glorified, 

Shining and tall and fair and straight 

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate; 



MY NEIGHBOR, 177 

Himself the gate whereby men can 

Enter the temple of God in mar., 

His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, 
And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, 
Which mingle their softness and quiet in one 
With the shaggy unrest they float down upon. 
And the voice, that was calmer than silence, said ; 
' Lo it is I, he not afraid. 
In many climes without avail 
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail ; 
Behold, it is here, this cup which thou 
Didst fill at the streamlet for Me but now ; 
This crust is my body broken for thee, 
This water his blood that died on the tree; 
The Holy Supper is kept indeed, 
In whatso we share with another's need, 
Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare. 
Who gives himself, with his alms, feeds three, — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me,' ;? 
12 



178 DIAMOND DUST. 



ifo$£ mo <p}ffl %n> 05 ii m%m 

FIRST let us acknowledge fairly that we are 
suffering from that horrid mental indisposi- 
tion, and not go about with a machine-made 
smile and uplifted brows, trying to cheat our- 
selves into a belief that, though we are the most 
unfortunate and sadly abused persons on the 
planet, yet we are altogether saintly in pa- 
tience — indeed, fair specimens of the noble army 
of martyrs. Let us lay aside our mask of 
wintery sunshine, and confess honestly and un- 
flinchingly, "Yes; I'm in the blues. I know I 
ought to rejoice evermore, and in every thing 
give thanks, yet somehow my cares are quite 
too much for me." 

Let us face the danger of indulging in the 
melancholy pleasure of being thoroughly wretched 
over every little piece of ill-fortune. Let us 
understand that, if w r e make mountains out of 
molehills of trouble, we shall abide under the 
shadow of snow-capped miseries all the long, 
long, weary days. 



HOW TO GET RID OF "THE BLUES." 179 

The diagnosis of the case will not be difficult 
if we apprehend the presence and importance of 
the disease. 

There is a close analogy between physical 
and mental ailments. 

Sometimes a part of the physical mechanism 
gets out of order, and the patient pays little 
attention, hoping to be well in a few r days. The 
disease, meanwhile, creeps stealthily and steadily 
toward the stronghold of life, till some miserable 
morning the man awakes to the fact that he is 
at its mercy. It can be dislodged from the cit- 
adel of strength only by severe and energetic 
measures. 

In like manner many a tired heart yields to 
a sense of discomfort that grows into a burden 
of care, an unbearable load, accompanied by all 
manner of forbodings, evil surmisings, misap- 
prehensions, and heart-break, till the sufferer 
finds himself at last in a cell with padded 
walls. 

Let us take these mental maladies in time; 
and first let us find the seat of the disease. 
There has been a deal of blundering at this 
point. Some of our wise moderns declare that 
a torpid liver is at the bottom of the mischief. 
They prescribe blue-pill or podophyllin to take 
the indigo out of affairs. They believe that the 



I So DIAMOND DUST, 

mental health hinges altogether upon physical 
conditions. Their one remedy for all the ills 
that flesh is heir to is found in good, generous 
care of the body. 

They can not claim originality in these no- 
tions. The old Greeks put the highest premium 
upon physical and aesthetic culture as conducive 
to mental and moral excellence. They paid 
supreme national honors to the man of fleetest 
foot and firmest muscle. Their success in that 
line of development was unparalleled, yet they 
had a state of morals that could but give the 
gloomiest views of life here and hereafter. If 
they did not have "the blues" it was no credit 
to their common sense. 

Plato said: " While the soul is mingled with 
this mass of evil, our desires for truth can not 
be satisfied ; for the body is a source of endless 
trouble to us, filling us with fears, fancies, idols, 
and every sort of folly. It prevents our ever 
having so much as a thought." 

No one can deny that the body affects the 
mind, depressing it when out of repair and ren- 
dering it faithful service only when sound; yet 
Ave must insist that mental disease is usually out 
of the reach of physical remedies. From close 
observation, as well as from pitiful personal ex- 
periences, we may conclude that the mental dis- 



HOW TO GET RID OF "THE BLUES." 181 

order known as "the blues" is to be regarded 
simply as an aggravated attack of egotism, and 
as such it must be treated. Instead of saying, 
with amiable self-pity, "I have the blues to-day, M 
let us use plain English, "I am suffering from an 
attack of egotism.'' 

The victims of the disease are legion. The 
young girl at a party who is uncomfortable un- 
less she has an opportunity to shine with special 
brilliancy at the piano or elsewhere; the young 
man who measures the enjoyment of the even- 
ing by the amount of attention he receives from 
host, hostess, or distinguished guests ; the 
brother who has a good prayer-meeting only 
when he has the lion's share of the exercises ; 
the woman who must lug into the conversation 
the story of the fine home she came from, the 
elegant people who are on her calling list, the 
trip to Europe she expects to take next year; 
the stupid old fellow who is forever telling of the 
things that happened when he was in college, 
the fine position his son is taking in business or 
political life, the excellent match his daughter is 
about to make, — each contented or wretched in 
proportion to the attention given by others to 
his weighty personalities — in cases like these the 
symptoms are so plain, there is little trouble 
with the diagnosis. 



1 82 DIAMOND DUST. 

"But I'm sure I'm no egotist," says a reti- 
cent, sharp-browed man who carries an iceberg 
atmosphere about with him at least three hundred 
days of the year. "I seldom talk about myself 
or my doings. The fact is, I 've felt a hundred 
times like shooting myself because I 'm such a 
dunce." 

You no egotist ! Why, my friend, you have 
a determination to be first and foremost in all 
things, a purpose as inveterate as that that 
nerved Alexander to mow down human oppo- 
nents as men cut grain. You have too much 
conscience to give the purpose full play, and be- 
cause you have not brain enough to carry out 
your mighty egotism, you have a falling out with 
self. Every now and then you set your will as 
a flint to be somewhat in the world yet, and the 
failure leads you to the shooting point. Your 
egotism is ten times deeper and more dangerous 
than that of your braggadocio brother. His 
bubbles to the surface; yours seethes and burns 
like a pent volcano. Your reticence and dispar- 
agement of self are chains and rods that your, 
conscience whispers necessary to keep the giant 
down. 

"True, true," sighs a sad-faced Christian with 
a meek drawl of self-depreciation. "Egotism is 
a great hindrance to grace, and I 'm thankful 



HOW TO GET RID OF "THE BLUES." 183 

I 'm safe from that snare. I always feel to 
mourn over my own unworthiness. M 

And yet yours is one of the most inveterate 
cases of spiritual egotism — if there is such a 
thing. Half your moping over your narrow 
usefulness — as you cheat yourself to think it — is 
really dissatisfaction that you are not regarded 
specially successful in the work you attempt. 
If you will analyze the mortification over your 
failures, you will find that your grief is not 
usually because the Master's work is suffering 
loss, but because you yourself are likely to come 
out minus the eclat that is so very agreeable an 
incense to burn before the ego. 

From observing these follies in ourselves and 
others, we have come to conclude that ordinarily 
the pain we suffer over hard circumstances, per- 
sonal incompetence, lack of opportunity, possi- 
ble, probable, and actual failure, which we call 
having the blues, is simply the result of more or 
less acute egotism, that can be gotten rid of only 
by remedies that go back of the physical, back 
even of the mental, and take hold of the spir- 
itual life. 

Webster defines egotism "a passionate love 
of self, leading a man to consider every thing as 
connected with his own person, and to prefer 
himself to every thing in the world." 



184 DIAMOND DUST. 

Man has been sagely called a microcosm. 
This ridiculous passion makes every " little 
world" the center of the universe; as if each 
planet and satellite and speck of star dust should 
glance grandly around through the infinite 
spaces, and stretch its tiny rays to enlighten all, 
feeling its wonderful self the central point, the 
mainspring, the moving power of the whole ; and 
then, if every planet, sun, and system did not 
in some way reflect its infinitesimal glory, it 
should fold in its rays as if it would mantle itself 
in gloom. Forsooth its efforts at shining are so 
utterly unappreciated that it may as well give 
up all attempts thereat, and punish the perverse 
indifference. 

Egotism attacks us so early \ we can not note 
its incipiency. We dawn upon ourselves so 
gradually, and so many of our earlier entries are 
written over, or rubbed from the record, we can 
not decipher the date of the birth of our self- 
consciousness. Richter is the only one I know 
who gives the when and where of his first cog- 
nizance of self — his discovery of the ego: Ich 
bin ein ich. 

A little undue attention, an amount of in- 
dulgence that it is a pleasure to give, and almost 
immediately the child is brought under the 
power of egotism. Under the hot-house devel* 



HOW TO GET RID OF "THE BLUES." 185 

opment process, all the pert sayings and pretty 
doings rehearsed before the helpless innocent 
while he is subjected to an infinity of adulations 
and flatteries, it will be strange if you do not 
see the self smirk in his eye almost as soon as 
he can go alone. 

The little maiden sulking in the corner be- 
cause she can not have the very finest doll her 
imagination can conceive, the small boy who is 
ready to burst into violent indignation because 
he can not whip every body of his size, and be 
acknowledged the prince and paragon in every 
mannish line — these baby humans are already 
in the advanced stages of the disease; and, ten 
chances to one, their very best friends by the 
sweetmeats given in mistaken tenderness have 
thrown them into the paroxysm. 

Our school work is so planned that we run the 
risk of a strong development of egotism by our 
efforts to arouse children to a necessary mental 
effort. So perverse is humanity even in the 
dewy morning time, there seems to be only one 
way of getting the lumbering, clumsy intellectual 
machinery in motion — that is, by stirring up the 
egotism. " Emulation/' minces the teacher; 
"Leaving off head," shout the children. All 
the same, a strengthened reiteration of the "Oh, 
how pretty!" of the nursery — a making of 



1 86 DIAMOND BUST. 

each child's consciousness the center of the 
universe. 

Thus, in the cradle, through the school years 
and on, egotism is pampered and cultured. It 
grows with the growth, and strengthens with the 
strength, till its fibers become so interwoven 
with the very tissue of the being its removal is 
like cutting a tumor from a vital organ — almost 
equivalent to taking the life of the patient. In 
mature years not only do flatterers, who try to 
secure favors from us through our vanity, in- 
crease our opinion of our own importance, but 
our very efforts at self-improvement lead in the 
same direction. 

Each human soul is a grand temple built by 
the Lord for his worship. Wonderful, ornate, 
glorious, but in ruins. Gates broken, avenues 
choked up, walls prostrate, arches fallen. When 
one looks into his own spirit, when he walks 
over the rubbish of wrecked powers, stumbling 
upon fragments of rarest architecture, bits of 
richest carving and gilding, jewels that might 
blaze in a seraph's crown, he can but feel the 
excellence of this masterpiece of God's handi- 
work. His language is a risky vehicle trundling 
over a rough causeway, fit only for baggage-trains 
laden with animal needs — he can bring no one 
into the shattered splendor. He can carry few 



HOW TO GET RID OF "THE BLUES." 187 

specimens out. He can not explore the inner 
sanctuary of any other life. So he comes to 
think, though in ruins, his is the temple, par excel- 
lence. He tries to clear the avenues, set up the 
arches, polish the gems, and as he grows enthu- 
siastic unless law checks his careless hand, he 
may wrench the guards from other lives, and 
tear them to pieces to build up his own. Thus 
did that prince of egotists, the great Napoleon. 

Those diseases are most to be dreaded that 
skulk like an Indian enemy, or glide like ser- 
pents through the by-ways leading to the life. 
In egotism, as in consumption, the patient, up 
to the very last, hour, clings to the hope that it 
is a mistake. 

If you are sure you at least are exempt, set 
a guard over your thoughts for one-half day. 
See how carefully you hide any fact about your- 
self that is not altogether creditable. How in- 
geniously, and yet apparently without intention, 
you parade the items that reflect honor upon 
self. Your visit to the White House is sure to 
slip into the talk, while your sojourn in the 
backwoods cabin among your poor relatives 
never seems quite suited to point a moral, and 
adorn a tale. 

How much more agreeable it is to have 
strangers regard you richer or better educated 



1 88 DIAMOND DUST. 

than you really are, than to have them make 
the opposite mistake. Not that you mean to 
deceive! Oh, no. But the habit of exalting 
self is so strong, you move in that direction 
without a noticeable volition. 

If one touches yourself, how you resent the 
injury! He may strike at the selves of ten 
other people, and you can find a palliation for 
the offense. 

If we detect in ourselves the symptoms of 
egotism, we will certainly desire a cure. Our 
very selfishness might prompt us to this ; for not 
only does egotism make itself and all about un- 
happy by its exactions and discontent, it defeats 
its own purpose. This is illustrated by success in 
scholarship. As long as one is occupied with 
an earnest intention to get the surest knowledge 
of the theme in hand, he can but get on in his 
studies. But as soon as his success begins to 
attract attention and subject him to flatteries, he 
begins to fail, if he heeds them. 

He is like a boy playing in the snow. He 
can make a straight line of steps as long as he 
keeps his eye on the goal ; but when he looks at 
his own feet and notes every track, he makes a 
zigzag line in spite of himself. 

The orator who is so full of his subject that 
he forgets every thing in trying to crowd upon 



HOW TO GET RID OF "THE BLUES" 189 

his hearers the thought that stirs his own soul, 
is the one who is pronounced eloquent; while 
the one who forgets his subject in himself usu- 
ally fails. 

In no department of effort is egotism more 
surely fatal to success than in religious work. 
Those who have been specially used by God to 
carry forward his work are in great danger of 
this infirmity. Their good works come to be 
spoken of with praise; and they find it easy to 
lose sight of the fact that all reformatory power 
is vested in the Lord Jesus Christ, and their 
only hope of success is in humble reliance upon 
his working in them and with them. 

When one forgets that he is only 

"A messenger at Christ's gateway 
Waiting for his command," 

he ceases to rely upon the Lord, and he soon 
finds himself shorn of strength. 

He may keep up the forms of earnestness. 

he may use the tones and forms of expression 
that belonged to the time when he was full of 
power by the Spirit of the Lord, his talk ma}* be 
full of stories of the old days when the pleasure 
of the Lord prospered in his hand, yet his 
effort comes to be like the mechanical move- 
ments of a corpse, loathsome and disgusting. 
His egotism has killed his usefulness; and un- 



190 DIAMOND DUST. 

less there is a revivification, the sooner the dead 
is buried out of our sight the better. 

Can egotism be aired? Can one who has be- 
come conscious that much of his thought is 
taken up with the interests of self, leaving but 
little vigor for high intellectual effort, or earnest 
spiritual work, one who finds his very humility 
a misnomer for self pity, his despondency over 
his failures simply a morbid craving for self-adu- 
lation — can such a one hope for a cure? 

There can be but one answer. If one hopes 
to enter heaven, he must be saved from this in- 
firmity — this sin. Otherwise he would not have 
peace even in the home of the glorified. 

We who do not believe in purgatory must 
look for a cure in this life. 

By what means can this be effected? Again, 
we find but one answer. Self-salvation is out 
of the question. We can not fortify self against 
self. It holds the inner fortress. The very 
pean of victory over its fall may herald its re-en- 
thronement. 

We can not reduce it to surrender by scourg- 
ings and starvation. Romanists have wrought 
upon that problem unsuccessfully for ages. 

There can be nothing in the hour and article 
of death to work a radical change in the moral 
nature. 



HOW TO GET RID OF "THE BLUES." 191 

We must be liberated by a power not our- 
selves, above ourselves, in this life, or we must 
wear the chain forever. 

Our only hope is in the word of the Master: 
* 6 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye 
shall be free indeed." 

The salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ is the 
only cure for this inwrought, over-mastering sel- 
fishness. Unless the atonement itself is a fail- 
ure — a tragical mistake, in Christ there must be 
an unfailing remedy for this and all other sins. 

A reasonable command presupposes power 
to obey. God's injunctions are equivalent to 
promises. If we do our best to obey, he is 
pledged by his Word and held by consistency 
with his own declarations of purpose to give us 
needed grace and help. 

Unless the commands, "Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself," "Rejoice evermore," "In 
every thing give thanks," be sheer nonsense, the 
power to yield complete obedience is promised 
in the all-sufficient grace of Christ. 

There have been examples of men and women 
being completely cured of egotism by the power 
of grace, fiery souls that have become all tender- 
ness and charity, turbulent spirits that have 
been changed into gentleness and patience; com- 
plaining, petulant egotists that have learned to 



192 DIAMOND DUST. 

give self utterly and joyfully for the salvation 
' of others. 

It was said of St. Jerome, "He subdued the 
wild beasts of the desert, but it took the Master 
of all to tame the lion, Jerome.'' 

When we lay our selfish souls in the hands 
of the Great Physician for a cure, he gives us to 
know the meaning of those words of the apostle,- 
"All things work together for good to them that 
love God." We rest from care of the adjust- 
ment of our relations and our work, for we cast 
all our care on him who careth for us. We are 
careful for nothing, but in every thing by prayer 
and supplication with thanksgiving w 7 e let our 
requests be made known unto God, and the 
peace of God which passeth all understanding 
shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ 
Jesus. 

We wall be able to say without hyperbole, 
" Thanks be unto God which ahvays causeth us 
to triumph in Christ." 



GETTING RICH. 193 



WANT is universal. It tugs at every human 
heart. It sobs in the infant's wail. It 
echoes in the old man's moan. It jangles 
through our shouts of mirth. Its discords grate 
and grind in our songs of triumph. 

The being that bears sway in this evil world 
is not the man of paradise with the chrism of 
God's "very good" upon his forehead. This 
man wants persistently, perpetually. He de- 
mands violently. He seizes furiously. A child 
in reason, a beast in appetite. 

Yet he mistakes forever. He does not un- 
derstand his own need. It is the mind that 
wants. It is the soul that starves. Will we 
never learn this? When we do, I think the mil- 
lennium will not be very far away. This cry of 
want is ceaseless. It will not down. It is 
heard alike in cabin and cottage, hut and palace. 
Listen at the door of the heart of that savage. 
He gormandizes like an anaconda, and lies in 
the sun like a lizard. He cares for his mate and 

13 



194 DIAMOND DUST. 

her young about as the lion does, sheds blood 
as ruthlessly as the tiger; yet through the beastly 
wrangling of passions, the low swash of the tide 
of brutish appetites, and the yell of cruel butchery 
sounds ever that moaning undertone of the bet- 
ter being, — hungry, hungry, hungry! 

Turn to the man who sits a king. Not a 
king made of purple and gems, into whose hand 
has chanced to fall a scepter, but the one who 
rules in the thought realm, and makes laws for 
potentates. Listen to his secret heart-throbs. 
Is he satisfied? He, too, feels a pinching, wear- 
ing, perpetual want. 

The present human state is abnormal. We 
are shipwrecked on an enemy's shore. Stunned, 
stupid, we can not decipher the cabalistic char- 
acters of the past. We do not know the vernac- 
ular of present events. We will not even bend 
our ear to the whispers of our own inner being. 
What wonders would be wrought by giving one 
half hour of each twenty-four to the study of self- 
needs. Listen to your own better life. It will 
tell you strange, new things. You have treated 
yourself as a nurse does the baby she doses out 
of the world. It moans — down with an opiate. 
It wails with hunger — thrust a sweetened, sick- 
ening compound down its throat. It writhes 
with pain — toss it, shake it, trot it, give it any 



GETTING RICH. 195 

thing, every thing but the patient attention, the 
sure care and healthful food for which it is dying. 

Want prompts to acquire. A babe is hungry. 
It thrusts into its mouth its fist, or the corner 
of its cradle quilt, now a bit of broken pottery, 
then a flower pretty to look upon, but with a 
poison drop at its heart, — whatever comes within 
reach of the eager, senseless clutch. As aim- 
lessly do grown-up children struggle to acquire. 

One attempts to satisfy his hunger with epi- 
curean luxuries. Dyspepsia and gout stand 
guard, but he will have these dainties for the 
animal, no matter about the consequence. 

Another seeks elegant adornments. Worms 
from Europe, sheep from Asia, and small, wild 
creatures from Arctic deserts are put under tax. 
Human lives are woven and stitched into his 
fabrics, and yet he tires of their beauty. It can 
not quiet the inner clamor. 

Another translates the cry into a demand 
for social preferment. He must rise above the 
common herd. So he tugs and toils, cuts fur- 
rows in his forehead, wears grooves in his heart, 
and scrambles upward. Yet the want, like the 
sea's eternal moan, surges ever through his life, 
only stronger for the aloneness of the altitude. 

Another, a trifle wiser, thinks to purchase 
silence with choice mental viands. He seeks 



196 DIAMOND DUST. 

rare authors, books bubbling with the ripe, red 
wine of poesy, resonant with the grand, heroic 
chimes sounded down through the ages by noble 
souls, — yet never for an hour does the hunger 
cease its gnawings. 

Most people think to satisfy themselves with 
money and the fine things it will purchase. Only 
fabulous misers who starve in garrets, bathing 
their leathery arms in golden coin, love money 
for its clink and glitter. The multitude seek it 
as the sinews of appetite, taste, and ambition. 
One has been trodden upon in his babyhood, 
chilled in his boyish years, his ragged coat jeered 
at on the play-ground. He sees that fine cloth- 
ing brings gentle treatment and what passes for 
respect. He is cold and hungry. He must 
have gentleness and attention. They are in the 
market for gold. So he sets his purpose like a 
flint to get gold. 

Another lacks courage. He rates himself at 
a low figure. If he can get the stamp of the 
world's mint upon his coinage he will believe it 
genuine. If he can have a good market price 
for his wares he will settle it that they are 
valuable. He will be satisfied, though he loses 
within an hour all they bring. 

One has been robbed by death, and left quite 
alone, even in the chill morning gray. He fancies 



GETTING RICH. 197 

that money will buy friends, so he also gives 
himself to getting wealth. 

We plume ourselves that we are not ideal— 
we are the plain, sensible people who say what 
we mean and believe what we say. Imaginative 
folk are they who gaze at the moon and make 
rhymes. Yet try us by placing a bit of paper 
in our hands with the national promise to pay in 
its criss-cross of engraved lines. It might mean 
to the monomaniac in the garret a thousand 
shining dollars. The sensualist clasps it in his 
eager palms and sees wine sparkling, cigar 
smoke wreathing, horses prancing, gems flash- 
ing, light feet tinkling, music rippling, laughter 
ringing. 

To the artistic, it means a sail on the moon- 
lit, castled Rhine, Swiss mountain views, studies 
of the old masters, rambles among ruins of 
Rome and Athens. 

To the literary, it represents walks alone with 
calm-browed old sages, hymns of immortal vigor, 
racy chats with spicy moderns. 

The dullest dolt holding it in his hand, the 
magic little possessive "mine" tingling on his 
tongue tip, would hardly fail to see in it the 
things for which he thinks the want within him 
clamoring. 

We talk of the idealism of ancient pagans 



T98 DIAMOND DUST. 

who looked into the calm, mild eyes of the 
sacred ox to see the Spirit of Eternal Power and 
Patience — forgetting the beast in the idea for 
which it stood. We are not a whit less imagi- 
native. We seize bits of green-tinted, pictured 
paper, to acquire which we have risen early and 
sat up late and eaten the bread of carefulness — 
we think we see in them the satisfying of the 
needs that crowd us to effort. 

The ignorant Hindoo worships the image he 
carries in his robe. The Brahmin may claim to 
have his thought upon the spirit represented by 
the idol. Yet the soul of each is bowed before 
a low sensualism of his own production. The 
name matters little. The mode is of small con- 
sequence. If we were to demolish all the idols 
of heathendom, unless by some divine process 
we could get into the pagan soul a nobler idea 
of the Infinite, the result would be only a new 
harvest for the image-makers, a new growth of 
sensuality. To correct the disordered expres- 
sion of our sense of need, the ideal must be 
renovated. The want must be interpreted aright. 

Many of our modes of getting rich are honor- 
able; but others are evil, even under the sanc- 
tion of law. If a man chances to be born the 
heir of a coronet or a crown, that accident en- 
titles him to the result of the hard work of 



GETTING RICH. 199 

scores of others who must starve, body and soul 
for his enrichment. 

The trouble lies back of the grinding and 
oppression, the thefts and robberies. There is 
an unsound idea in the foundation of the social 
structure — a wrong rendering of the need — a de- 
termination to be rich in purse only, and not in 
mind and soul. 

Under this regime three people have to be 
ground up, spirit and muscle, that the fourth 
may have the means of satisfying his hunger. 
The question turns upon who shall be the for- 
tunate fourth in this struggle. The answer is 
usually the old formula of the survival of the 
fittest — the strongest of sinew or brain or will, 
or by that aggregate of will, known as law. 

If they who have power to put others under 
tax comprehended that their own want could 
be satisfied only by the enduring riches, they 
would find means to live in the good and the 
right way, without harm to others. 

We begin early to give our children a wrong 
bias in this matter. The w T ant within sets the 
little one reaching after whatever is desirable. 
Parents, too thoughtless, too indolent, or too in- 
tent on getting money to give due attention 
even to so w r eighty a matter as the shaping of 
the characters of their children, satisfy them- 



200 DIAMOND DUST. 

selves by flinging a legal barrier in the path of 
the inclination. There is no effort to teach the 
restless, grasping little being that it is a higher 
pleasure to give to make others happy, to share, 
to know. 

He soon comes to believe that he must pos- 
sess if he would enjoy; an error in the formulae 
of the first chapter. 

Then the tin savings-bank for hoarding pen- 
nies. To buy comforts for the sick child back 
in the alley, bread for the poor, Bibles for the 
heathen? Oh, no. To teach him to be saving. 
"To see how much he can get." Your child 
hardly needs to be taught that he must get and 
save money if he would be happy. The world 
will wear that lesson into him soon enough. 
Possibly as a birth-gift he has received quite too 
strong a tendency in that direction. 

Mother, would you look for the ripened fruit 
of your careless sowing? See yourself thirty 
years hence, infirm, old, alone. Your son will 
not starve you in a garret. He is too proud for 
that — too humane, possibly — but not too humane 
to starve you in a corner of his mansion. He 
has grown rich. The soil of his heart is tramped 
down, trodden hard by the ceaseless round of 
bargains, sales, moneyed schemes. His life's 
horizon is narrowed, and its atmosphere has 



/ GETTING RICH. 20 1 

grown cold, till he has never for you a word of 
cheer or tenderness. He orders for you delicate 
food and expensive clothing, but he withholds 
the cup of cold water so sorely needed in your 
outworn life. Self-centered and sordid through 
greed of gain, he follows the bent you gave him 
when you had him under your hand. 

, We must make our children understand in 
the outset that to be happy is not to gratify 
every appetite like a mere animal, nor to strut 
about in showy plumage like a peacock, nor to 
keep upon the crest of the wave of excitement, 
forever amused and entertained; but, rather, joy 
is found in doing, good, conquering self, making 
others glad, living by the Heavenly Father's 
law. Children can be taught these lessons. 
We have seen the experiment carried out suc- 
cessfully. 

"Oh, yes," sighs an overtasked mother; "it 
is easy enough to toss off fine theories from a 
pen's point; but just step into my place once." 
I know "mother" is a synonym for "sacri- 
fice." I know there are mothers who stagger 
under the entire load of training the family — a 
load that is quite enough for two pairs of 
shoulders — while the senior partner of the firm 
gives himself altogether to the commissary de- 
partment; but my exhortation is intended spe- 



2 02 DIAMOND DUST. 

cially for those who make eating and drinking 
and appearing well the chief end of man. Bet- 
ter a thousand times leave the trimming off the 
dress and put the love into the heart. 

When a boy is grown, he will be not a whit 
less a man for having worn garments minus 
ruffles and embroidery. He will be infinitely 
nobler if you spend the time carefully culturing 
the germs of thought and the growth of unself- 
ish purpose. Now is your time. We reap in 
Autumn what we sow in Spring. 

Novelists help on our foolish notions about 
getting rich. The old trick of having a chrys- 
alis page or artist burst suddenly into a grand 
duke or prince is worn out, but the principle 
holds all the same. Hero and heroine must 
marry and be rich. Moral: Success equals 
w T ealth ; wealth equals happiness. 

Practical lesson: young man, get rich, honor- 
ably, if convenient, but at all events get rich. 
Young lady, marry a fortune; at all hazards 
catch a rich husband. 

Society also helps strengthen this false order 
of things. Two friends meet. One inquires 
how a mutual acquaintance is getting along. 
These are sensible men. The question must re- 
fer to the growth and culture of the mind that 
is avowedly of prime importance. They are 



GETTING RICH. 203 

Christians. It must look in the direction of the 
man's spiritual interests. Nothing of the kind. 
It means simply, How much money does he 
make. In what style does he live. ''Oh, he is 
doing splendidly." How? Working out a plan 
for helping others into a better life? Turning 
many to righteousness? Growing in God's good 
will? No, indeed. Little cares he for moral 
distinctions or benefits. "Doing splendidly," 
in every-day Saxon, is simply getting money 
and spending it upon one's self. 

The notions of society are miasmatic. Un- 
less one carries a powerful disinfectant, he can 
but take in the poison. Only now and then one 
uses this precaution, so the majority take the 
fever of getting rich. That little adjective may 
mean a red flannel shirt and a string of glass 
beads, or it may mean a kingdom. It may 
stand for a big potato patch and an immeasur- 
able supply of whisky, or it may represent an 
additional empire. Some fling society's "thus 
far" in her face, and take to the high seas with 
the prospect of being launched into perdition 
from the rope's end. Others cheat behind 
counters, more cowardly, but with no less risk 
of final loss. Some wait for gold to drop from 
dead hands; others plod on, year after year, to 
get rich by steady work. 



204 DIAMOND DUST. 

We may flatter ourselves that we do not care 
for money. Possibly not, according to the aspi- 
rations of miserly A, epicurean B, or dashing 
young C; but it will be strange if our faces are 
not set towards some other point which means 
the same thing. 

We are saying to ourselves, ""Now, this sac- 
rifice, this strain of will, nerve, or muscle, and 
then such a luxury, such style by and by." Here 
is a chaos of the odds and ends of desirable 
things which go to the make-up of a fortune, 
and which will satisfy no more when once ac- 
quired than do the cheap, simple purchases of 
to-day. 

Nothing can be more hopeless than the at- 
tempt to satiate the soul's thirst with riches or 
the best that they can buy. They who have 
most money are the most eager to increase their 
wealth. 

Some gentlemen in a public room in New 
York City were discussing the amount of prop- 
erty necessary to satisfy one completely. One 
man thought a quarter of a million would be 
enough. " No," said another, " I shall not leave 
business till I have at least half a million." 
" Pooh!" said a third, "one ought to have two 
or three millions." 

Just then a money-king hurried into the 



GETTING RICH. 205 

room — one of those who always go as if the 
hounds of starvation were snarling at their heels. 
With an apology for detaining him they asked 
how much he thought necessary to satisfy the 
desire for gain. " A little more ! " he snapped, as 
he rushed on. His reply emphasized the fact 
. that acquiring only whets the appetite to ac- 
quire. The acquisition of property does not se- 
cure happiness. 

Fortunately very few reach the goal toward 
which so many tug and strain. And the few 
who call themselves "successful" are the most 
unsuccessful of all. 

How seldom do you see a rich old man whose 
face is sweet, and calm, and restful. Most of them 
in seeking monetary wealth have neglected to ac- 
quire mental riches and spiritual affluence. See 
the ridges of care, the furrows of pain upon their 
foreheads, and the tense, sharp lines about their 
keen, uneasy eyes — lines of bitterness and disap- 
pointment. No need of prodigal sons and un- 
grateful daughters to plant with thorns their pil- 
low of death. Long as is their rent-roll and 
profitable as are their stocks, they themselves are 

" Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor." 

Of all the calentures that lure to the grave, 
of all the ignes fatui that dance over death mires, 
none is so deadly as the greed of gain. Not 



206 DIAMOND DUST. 

alone is the body cheated out of rest and care in 
its treadmill, but the mind is robbed of devel- 
opment and the soul is wrecked eternally. 

The Master, who never used words carelessly, 
said, "How hardly shall they that have riches 
enter the kingdom of heaven !" 

We pity those who trudge ever in the service 
of toil, or slip on the icy stair of fortune, but 
how infinitely more do they deserve our commis- 
eration who succeed in building for themselves a 
gilded mausoleum, a tomb not only for the burial 
of the poor outworn body but of the mind and 
soul. 

" Thus did a choking wanderer in the desert cry, 
* O that Allah one prayer would grant before I die, 
That I might stand up to my knees in a cool lake, 
My burning tongue and parching throat in it to slake.' 
No lake he saw, and when they found him in the waste 
A bag of gems and gold lay just before his face. 
And his dead hand a paper, with this writing, grasped, 
1 Worthless was wealth, when dying for water, I gasped.' 
Be diadem or helmet on thy head, 
It must be arrow-pierced, and thou lie dead. 
Then every man whose mind is wisdom-stocked, 
Will strive to have his wealth in Heaven locked." 



GIVING BY RULE. 207 



THE world is in revolt, and God's main effort 
toward it is to bring about a surrender. 

It is a principle of healthful reconstruction 
that each loyal subject shall use all his strength 
to bring the rest into subjection. God would con- 
script every thing in which there -is power, and 
use it in the conquest of these revolted provinces. 

If all who surrender to God would observe 
this obligation I doubt if the next century would 
dawn upon a single rebel. The trouble is, very 
few of us are in downright earnest to carry out 
God's plans. 

We hire some one as economically as possible 
to offer eloquent prayers for us, and give us fine 
disquisitions upon morality ; we give the pittance 
that is teased out of us by some one who denies 
himself almost the necessaries of life that he may 
make us see our duty toward the neglected 
masses, and then we settle back in our snug 
pews voting ourselves quite respectable, comfort- 
able Christians. 



208 DIAMOND DUST. 

God may collect <Z7'rears of us by force of 
arms. He obliged this republic, a few years 
since, to pay for cannon and ironclads what she 
would not give for school-houses, and churches. 

If we will not evangelize the masses we must 
keep them under by armed force, and we find 
that God's police, civilization and Christianity, 
missionaries and Bibles, are by far the most eco- 
nomical, considered simply from a financial point 
of view. Riots and wars force men to give by 
the thousand in self-defense — men from whose 
grip a few dollars for God's work are w r renched 
most difficultly — and the moneyed outlay is by 
far the cheapest part of their giving. 

Never before were there so many doors open 
as now to Christian effort. Red-handed war has 
torn open the rusty gates of sepulchral, old East- 
ern empires. China, Japan, India, Africa, South 
America, Mexico, with their swarming millions, 
are thirsting, dying for the truth of God. If the 
Christian Church, if Protestant America alone, 
would give and work as God wills, the world 
would be evangelized within the century. 

Christianity is based upon self-giving. Christ 
is God's " unspeakable gift. " They who are one 
with him in his work must go 

"Toiling up new Calvaries ever, 
With the cross that turns not back." 



GIVING BY RULE. 209 

He who is complete in Christ gives himself 
for the helping of others as certainly as did Je- 
sus the Master, not as a propitiatory sacrifice, 
but as a working force. He ma}' labor with his 
hands, as did Paul at Corinth ; he may write dic- 
tionaries and French grammars, as did John Wes- 
ley ; yet his one thought and purpose are to get 
all with whom he has contact, and whom he can 
reach with any sort of influence, back to their 
allegiance to God. And this is the normal Chris- 
tian life. Any consecration less than this is un- 
sound, unhealthy, defective. 

When one has really given all to God's work 
it is unnecessary to argue the duty of giving 
money to carry on its operations. The greater in- 
cludes the less. There is no use in prating about 
a " complete consecration " if one holds his dol- 
lars with a stingy grip, while the Lord's work is 
suffering for financial help. 

It is a slender piety that lays by its wealth in 
diamonds and laces, elegant houses, handsome 
grounds, broad acres, bonds and mortgages, 
while the work of the world's evangelization is 
held back every-where for lack of money ; labor- 
ers waiting to be sent to the whitened fields, 
those already at work recalled, schools closed, 
and men and women perishing in black ignorance 
by the thousand. 

M 



210 DIAMOND DUST. 

A few Christians give liberally. A smaller 
number give methodically. Before the Church 
meets fully its obligation in this regard every one 
who makes a public profession of faith in Christ 
must take upon himself a pledge to give by 
rule, and to the extent of his ability. 

Nothing is well done that is not done by 
system — according to law. This holds in the 
simplest mechanical work. You can not make 
so much as a proper hoe handle without bring- 
ing it into right lines by the laws of mechanics. 

We see this principle wrought out in mone- 
tary affairs. Two men start in business at the 
same time. One has a good capital and a fine 
opening for trade. He invests carelessly, deals 
recklessly, receives large return for some arti- 
cles, loses heavily on others, and spends money 
freely, because he believes that his profits will 
warrant generous living. He wakes up some 
gloomy morning to find that his gay craft has 
been steadily a-leak, and his fine fortune is a 
wreck. 

The other starts with a small capital, works 
it carefully, and by rule. He knows each Sat- 
urday night his approximate assets and liabili- 
ties, and guages his outlays by the figures in his 
ledger. After a few patient, plodding years he 
finds himself with a competence. 



GIVING BY R ULE. 2 1 1 

This need of living by rule is manifest, also, 
in hygiene. Suppose a child is fed once an hour 
or once in twenty-four, just as he can clamor 
somebody into attention, how would he thrive? 

Suppose a man exercises one day till he 
drops from exhaustion, and lies motionless for a 
week, sleeps forty-eight hours, and then keeps 
awake till nature shuts his eyes by force, fasts a 
week and surfeits a fortnight, what do you im- 
agine would be his physical condition? 

Christianity has added fifteen years to the aver- 
age of human life, and probably in no one hy- 
gienic point has it had the advantage more cer- 
tainly than in its eating, sleeping, and working 
by rule. In all these matters its practice and 
methods are directly opposite to those of the 
savages. 

Suppose education were carried on in a des- 
ultory fashion — a nibble of Greek, a browse of 
Latin or German as the inclination might be, 
mathematics or natural sciences to the taste, fact 
or fiction according to preference — what sort of 
scholars would we have with such a curriculum? 

If I were sent outside of the Church for the 
raw material out of which a strong Christian was 
to be made, I should take the one who had 
been trained to live his physical and mental life 
by rule. He would have his strength well in 



2 1 2 DIAMOND D VST. 

hand, his energies under rein, where they could 
be available. 

The Church should have all her force, talent, 
culture, money, general influence, where she 
could lay her hand upon them and make the 
very most of each item ; and this can never be 
till each individual member learns to give as 
well as live by rule. 

The very etymon of the word religion from 
the Latin religare, to bind anew, indicates the 
system to which its adherents are to be held. 

Of all people Methodists are most at fault if 
they fail to work by rule. Some imagine that 
the grand religious awakening of the eighteenth 
century was a general riot of glorious irregular- 
ities. They could not be more mistaken. That 
freshet of Gospel truth that overflowed the mas- 
sive, ivy-draped walls of the old Anglican church, 
and leaped John Calvin's iron barriers, obeyed 
law as certainly as do the planets in their orbits. 
They who wrought most wondrously in that 
mighty current were people who most positively 
slept and rose, talked and prayed, preached and 
wrote, lived and gave by rule. 

Look at Wesley's prodigious methods. We 
think it wonderful for a machinist to hold an 
entire manufactory in his head — every wheel re- 
volving, every hammer beating, every ounce of 



GIVING BY RULE, 213 

power weighed and adjusted in his tough, tire- 
less brain. In Wesley's thought was the com- 
plex mechanism of bands, classes, societies, con- 
ferences, a membership of all castes, from 
Kingswood to the court; a ministry of all orders, 
lay, clerical, and episcopal. Think you his Her- 
culean labors could have been wrought without 
the closest system? 

We have a record of his beneficence. When 
his income was thirty pounds a year he lived on 
twenty-eight, and gave two. When it was sixty, 
he lived on twenty-eight and gave thirty-two. 
When it amounted to a hundred and twentv, he 
kept himself to the frugal twenty-eight and gave 
ninety-two. It is estimated that, from the pro- 
ceeds of his publications and other sources of 
income, he gave in all over one hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars. His last entry in his be- 
nevolence account reads thus: "For upwards of 
eighty-six years I have kept my accounts ex- 
actly. I will not attempt it any longer, being 
satisfied with the continual conviction that I 
save all I can, and give all I can, that is, all 
I have." 

God's idea of a ritual was given in minutiae 
to the Jews. Their one temple was built under 
his direction, and it was a marvel of beauty from 
base to cap-stone. Its service was most expen- 



214 DIAMOND DUST. 

sive. In the very outset one twelfth of the peo- 
ple were set apart for teachers and priests. The 
other eleven-twelfths were to support them, re- 
lieving them from the necessity of laboring for 
their daily bread. It was distinctly specified 
that every Jew should give one-fifth of his in- 
come to the service of education and religion. 

We believe every Christian ought to give at 
least one-tenth of his income to the work of 
God ; one-half as much as the benevolence of 
the old dispensation. 

This plan of giving a tenth to the Lord 
w r ould be economical. Nine-tenths of our finan- 
cial troubles grow out of a slipshod keeping of 
accounts. The large percentage of business ven- 
tures that result in failure is probably owing to 
the fact that many go a little beyond their abil- 
ity, hoping that by some turn in the wheel they 
can meet their obligations and come through 
safe. A financial gale strikes the sea. The 
waves dash higher than they expected and the 
outcome is wreck and loss. If they had kept 
their accounts so that they could know at any 
hour just the condition of their finance, they 
could have prepared for the storm in time. 

These careless business people never can tell 
exactly how they stand. They never know the 
precise appreciation or depreciation, of a piece of 



GIVIXG BY RULE. 215 

their property. They hope it is about so much, 
and they are apt to look at their belongings as 
people do when they eat cherries with magnify- 
ing glasses on so as to make them seem large. 
Facts are relentless, however, and the bank- 
ruptcy that might have been spared if a plain, 
simple, sure reckoning had been taken, comes on 
apace. Women are accused of ruining their hus- 
bands by their extravagance, when, as the case 
often stands, it was the man's careless method 
with his accounts, making himself and his wife 
think themselves worth much more than they 
really were, that did the mischief. 

If one promises God one-tenth of his income 
he can not be honest unless he knows all his re- 
ceipts and expenditures that he may get at the 
exact amount due his benevolence account. 

One ought in self-defense to give at least one- 
tenth of his income. Covetousness is a cardinal 
sin. One-twelfth of Christ's body-guard fell 
through covetousness. Christ was so poor he 
had not where to lay his head. The expenses 
of his itinerant tours were paid by women who 
risked all to follow him. He had to work a mir- 
acle to get a piece of coin for tribute money. 
Certainly the disciple of such a poverty-stricken 
teacher was in far less danger from love of gain 
than we who have houses and lands, stocks and 



216 DIAMOND DUST. 

bonds. It behooves us to walk carefully where 
an apostle fell. 

Very few escape an attack of covetousness. 
Many who are liberal while they are poor, dis- 
cover a thirst for gain as soon as they begin to 
acquire. In cholera times we use disinfectants. 
Systematic giving is God's guarantee against the 
miasmatic taint of avarice. Others as good as we 
have grown avaricious. Ten chances to one we 
will fall into the same snare unless we take spe- 
cial means for its prevention. 

Those who have done the most for God's 
work have been among the most self-denying 
and systematic givers. Mary Fletcher, though 
a woman of fine tastes and culture, lived upon 
twenty-five dollars a year and gave the rest of 
her income. 

Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, gave up her 
liveried servants and expensive equipages, selling 
even her jewels, and living in the simplest style 
that she might have the means to buy and build 
chapels for the poor, and to turn theaters into 
places of worship. 

Dr. Coke gave to God's work two fortunes. 
Near the close of his life he arose in the British 
Conference and asked for the establishment of a 
mission in India. He was told there were neither 
men nor means for the work. He replied, "I 



GIVING BY RULE. ' 217 

have yet a small estate of one thousand pounds. 
I give that and myself with it to go to India. 
If you refuse my offer you will break my heart." 
I have read of an English Methodist who looks for 
divine direction in his business and gives by the 
Pauline rule, " as God prospers him." A jour- 
neyman- mechanic, he set up a small business on 
borrowed capital. Eight years after he pledged 
to give fifty guineas a day as his missionary sub- 
scription. Eliza Garrett, of Chicago, to whose 
benevolence many of the Methodist ministers of 
the North-west are indebted for their theological 
education, the foundress of Garrett Biblical Insti- 
tute, gave all her property for that work, reserv- 
ing for herself only two hundred dollars a year. 

Giving by rule has Bible sanction. Abraham 
gave one-tenth, and with God's blessing he be- 
came a man of princely fortune. 

Jacob went out with his staff, a poor man. 
At Bethel he vowed to the Lord, " Of all that 
thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth 
unto thee." In twenty years he came back rich. 

St. Paul enjoins upon the Churches a weekly 
benefaction. " Upon the first day of the week 
let every one of you lay by him in store as God 
hath prospered him." 

In no part of the work did John Wesley show 
more skill in handling his forces than in his class 



218 DIAMOND DUST. 

system. Each leader was to have the care of 
about twelve persons, not only looking after their 
spiritual needs as a' sub-pastor, but receiving 
their contributions for the support of the Gospel 
and the poor. Every one who joined the 
Wesleyan Societies must give each week a due 
proportion of his income for the Lord's work. 
Wherever his plan was followed there was plenty 
of money for the needs of the Church. 

In these times of financial pressure when so 
many of our benevolent enterprises are suffering 
heavy loss from the lack of means to push their 
interests, it would be well for us to go back to 
first principles in our finance. Let every child 
who comes into the Church as a probationer be 
taught that at least a penny a week must be 
given for the support of God's work. Let this 
be given regularly as an educator in beneficence. 
Let others give according to their means week 
after week, and the vexed questions of rented 
pews, begging speeches at dedications, agents, 
fairs and festivals would be happily settled to the 
infinite relief of many excellent people. 

The Roman Catholics are ready enough to 
take up these plans and make them of the ut- 
most avail. They have their Society for Propa- 
gandism, each member of which gives one cent 
a week. One collects from ten and forwards the 



GIVING BY RULE. 219 

dimes to another who sends the dollars to 
another, each collector gathering and forwarding 
from ten beneath him, till by the time it reaches 
the cardinal at Lyons it amounts to hundreds of 
thousands for pushing forward the plans of the 
Romish Church. 

Papists never lack money. If a Protestant 
institution is to be sold for debt, Catholics have 
the money ready for its purchase, and that money 
is not from the bounty of the rich but from the 
littles given by the poor. It is high time for 
Protestants to begin to use the same wisdom in 
their financial plans. 

When the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society 
was organized, many thought it a mistake that its 
constitution should forbid the taking of general 
collections. " So much interest in your meeting, 
ladies, such a tide of enthusiasm, surely if you 
would pass the baskets you would get hundreds 
of dollars." " Perhaps so, sir; but what about 
next year, when our fine talkers would not be 
here to stir the people ? Better, far better as we 
believe, the plan of getting the women of the 
Church to lay aside, always religiously, the little 
two cents a week. The income will be larger 
and surer. And then as an educator of the peo- 
ple this society does more by inducing ten 
women to give a dollar a year, with the thought 



220 DIAMOND DUST. 

and prayer that usually accompany such gifts, 
than by persuading one to give a hundred dollars. " 

A thousand pities that all our benevolences 
might not be wrought by this same rule; each 
by a method of its own, but all upon the prin- 
ciple of gathering the littles steadily and con- 
stantly from the many. 

But one says: "1 am very poor. One-tenth 
of my income will be quite too insignificant to 
offer to the Lord." Let us not forget the widow 
of whom Christ said, "She hath cast in more 
than they all." 

Let us be humble enough to give the little, 
and, though we can ill afford to spare it, let us 
trust as did the Gentile woman when required to 
take an extra boarder at the risk of starving her- 
self and her children. God saw to it that her 
cruse of oil and barrel of meal did not fail. 
4 'But I am in debt." People have been known 
to keep up a lightning-rod of that sort to con- 
duct off flashing appeals. I believe that if one 
would use the nine-tenths of his income, giving 
the other tenth to the Lord's work, he would 
get out of debt sooner than if he used upon 
himself the whole. 

We measure our benevolence by that of 
others in the Church, when the fact is, the 
Church -does not begin to give as she ought. 



GIVING BY R ULE. 2 21 

If she did, Christian enterprises would not be 
forever on the pauper list. Perhaps we are 
among the culpable. Let us face the facts in 
time, lest in the judgment the blood of the per- 
ishing be found upon us, lest our names be upon 
the roll of wrath. 

Let us remember that our money, as an agent 
of good, belongs to our Master. Let us see to 
it that each dollar is spent under his eye. We 
may have his ''Well done" on each business 
transaction, little and large. When they who 
have been won to him out of every kindred and 
tribe and people come up before him with joy, 
there may be those whom even our indirect 
efforts have helped on the way. Then will his 
word, sweeter than heaven's most glorious sym- 
phonies, sound through our souls. "Inasmuch 
as ye did it to one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye did it unto me." 



222 DIAMOND DUST. 



I 



€^0$£W Old). 

N the evening twilight of each life there stand 

two grim, beckoning skeletons — age and 
death. We may laugh and shout in the merry 
to-day. We may dance and sing as did the 
condemned of the Conciergerie with the dead 
carts and coffins clattering up to the gate, and 
to-morrow — the guillotine ! Yet we can not shut 
out the ghastly inevitable. There they stand — 
those grisly skeletons, age and death. We can 
escape the one only by the early coming of the 
other, from whom our every instinct draws back. 
Age is as unsightly and probable as death is 
fearful and sure. 

The physical havoc wrought by age is most 
unlovely and pitiful. If only the earthly house 
of this tabernacle could be taken down in a 
more dignified and agreeable manner, as prob- 
ably it was intended at the outset ! 

See that old pair sitting in the chimney-cor- 
ner. Once she was bright and beautiful; he 
handsome and brave. Now, they are wrinkled 



GROWING OLD. 223 

and bent and palsied. Her eves were full of the 
passion and power of womanliness; his as keen 
as an eagle's glance. Now, the eyes of both 
are sunken and dim, seeing only blurs and 
blotches where once they traced beauty. Their 
hair, once heavy and dark, is coarse and gray, 
and tucked under uncouth skullcaps. Their 
teeth ached themselves away long since. Their 
limbs, that used to trip so nimbly and dance so 
gayly, have lost their sprightliness and strength. 
They can only totter and cramp and suffer rheu- 
matic torture. Their hands have forgotten their 
cunning, and fumble as clumsily as do those of 
a twelvemonth's babe. Their voices have lost 
their melody and power; the poor old bodies 
whine out their ailments, and on sunny days 
croon and drawl about the dead past. Ah me! 
Is this skeleton reaching his arms for every 
one of us? 

But sadder far than this physical decay is the 
failure of the mental powers. Once this man 
and woman were among the elite. Xow, they 
set the youngsters a-titter with their old-fashioned 
whims and notions. "Mother's breaking fast, " 
drawls the old man, nodding across at his wife. 
"A pity, too! She used to be wonderful smart, 
quite a blue stocking, as they used to say in my 
early days. Ah well, we've had our time." 



224 DIAMOND DUST. 

One would care less for the tumbling down of 
the old tent, if the royal mind could stand un- 
harmed in the wreck. The stout strokes of the 
good right arm, the deftness of the fingers, the 
strength and glory of the prime, could be given 
up, if the thought could yet be sent forth among 
men, a felt force. But to have book and pen 
fall from the palsied hand, and all the new de- 
velopments of science and literature drift by un- 
noted, till one is as little en rapport with contem- 
porary men and events as would be a resurrected 
Roundhead, thought and fancy cramped down to 
a little round of insignificant things, while the 
grand unfoldings of the age are as little compre- 
hended as are the diplomacies of Thibet — who 
can contemplate such probabilities without a 
temptation to suicide? 

Our old people in the corner remember when 
the business of the house and the estate were 
all wrought out in their brain. Now, their opin- 
ions are of little more weight than the guesses 
of the nimble-tongued ten-years-old. "Times 
are changed, father; they don't do things that 
way nowadays." "Why, mother, you are too 
old-fashioned for any thing." 

Once that man's ipse dixit was authoritative 
in town affairs. Now, he urges a question that 
seems to him vital. Answer: "Why, father, 



GROWING OLD. 225 

that was settled years and years ago. Do n't 
know as you can understand it, but it 's all right. 
We got through with that the Winter before Ben- 
nie died. Don't you remember?" Yes, there 
are marble mile-stones that gleam, white and cold, 
like ghosts, along the misty, backward way ; he 
can not lose sight of them ; but all the rest 
seems like a fog-enshrouded sea. 

Once his incisive thinking cut down through 
questions that concerned state interests, and his 
voice told on the destinies of the people. Now, 
he is cast aside, a child without the future of 
childhood, lacking all its sweetness and promise. 
With his worn-out body and effete mind, he is 
waiting in helplessness for the rickety, creaking 
machinery to stand still, and free him and his 
friends from the burden of his being. 

And yet the picture has darker, sadder shades. 
Those people were once co-workers with the 
Lord Jesus Christ. Not only did they help 
nobly in reformatory movements, but they led 
many and many a soul to the Savior. Now, 
their religious life is as completely enfeebled as 
their mental vigor. 

Their voices used to have weight in the 
councils of the Church. The pastor leaned upon 
them for sympathy and advice. Now, the Church 
moves on just as it would if they were in the 

IS 



2 26 DIAMOND DUST. 

grave. It works, legislates, extends, and they 
are unable even to comprehend its growth — in 
danger of reading it all backward. Well for 
them if they are not left to croak about the de- 
generacy of modern Christians. They can not 
pray and praise as they used to do. Things 
must have gone wrong some way. People have 
got out of the old paths. ' ' When we were 
young you could tell a Christian woman by 
her bonnet as far as you could see her, and it 
would have done your heart good to hear how 
long and eloquent-like the men could hold forth 
in a meeting. But there were Christians in the 
Church in our young days." 

Oh, the pity of it ! To grow old ! How 
many times, if we had dared, would we have 
prayed to die even before reaching "the half- 
way house " rather than come down to this 
whining, driveling, pushed-aside old life! 

Is physical, mental, and moral decay inevit- 
able? Is there no fountain of youth whose waters 
can give us immortal vigor? 

Much of the decay of old age is the result 
of neglect, and, therefore, it may be avoided. 
In attempting to demonstrate this, perhaps, as 
in some people's theology, the wish is the parent 
of the argument, and the logic is not more robust 
than a wish, yet, as we all need comfort on this 



GROWING OLD. 227 

score, it may be worth while to make the effort 
to prove the proposition. 

Lawlessness and laziness are the two prime 
enemies of human strength and endurance. 

Unreasoning creatures live by law. The law 
of their life, though originally as benign as divine 
love could devise, has been infracted by man's 
sin, and carries the curse-mark of his transgres- 
sion. Therefore they die. Their life moves in 
a circle. They come into existence, grow, ma- 
ture, decline, and are crowded out of being by 
the pressure of on-coming successions. Except 
where the penalty of the curse comes in with fe- 
rocity and violence, these changes of the mode 
of being are, as far as we know, gentle, painless, 
and not unsightly. Who ever heard of a super- 
annuated buffalo, or a chimney corner robin? 

The ability to apprehend and obey law is the 
kingliness of humanity. It is the base of re- 
sponsible action. It is that which recommended 
us to the redemptive notice of the Son of God. 
With our consent he will ultimately lift from us 
the curse. Even now he will help us mitigate 
the effects of that curse, but it must be accord- 
ing to law. Our perverse disposition to resist 
and break law is at the bottom of much of the 
misery that comes upon us when we grow old. 

The taint of laivlessness is in our blood. It 



228 DIAMOND DUST. 

comes to us straight from the forfeited paradise. 
It shows itself very early. Children hate re- 
straint. Tell one of those " toddlin' wee things " 
not to touch a certain article, and he will not rest 
till his tiny fingers have pushed their way through 
your prohibition. The limitation suggests and 
stimulates the very mischief you would have him 
avoid. "What made you tell us not to put 
beans up our noses?" whined a little fellow, when 
his mother appeared on the scene of misde- 
meanor and suffering. "We wouldn't have 
thought of it if you hadn't 'a ' told us not to." 

In our childhood we could hop and skip all 
day, taking ten thousand useless steps, but it had 
to be at our own sweet will. If we were set at 
something that we felt obliged to do, our strength 
gave out immediately. You can " break " a colt 
in a month, but it takes ten years to break a boy 
to steady, reliable, working ways. 

In mental effort also. Children's minds are 
uncomfortably busy, prying into every thing ex- 
cept their grammar and arithmetic. Pictures 
and prizes must be held before them perpetually, 
penalties and disgrace shaken over their heads, 
to coax or drive them into the habit of doing a 
required amount of work in a given time. 

Many students make it the main task of their 
school life to resist, and wheedle, and outwit the 



GROWING OLD, 229 

teacher. He is their natural enemy. A harm- 
less person, possibly, probably an amiable gen- 
tleman when they meet him in society, yet he 
represents the restraint of law, and, as such, 
must be beaten out of his purpose. 

When they get the conduct of their life into 
their own hands, it is not unusual for them to 
throw the rein upon the neck of the lawless im- 
pulse. They do not venture to raise their hand 
against their neighbor's life for fear of the law of 
the land, and of the divine law that has been the 
one tireless schoolmaster that would not be shaken 
off; but may they not do as they will in regard 
to their own personal life ? Their lawlessness 
relieves them of mental discipline, and they do 
no more brain work than they are driven to 
perform by necessity, or it permits them to in- 
dulge as they will their appetites, passions, am- 
bitions. They destroy their digestion by crowd- 
ing their stomachs to overwork upon fiery, 
greasy masses, villainous compounds that tickle 
a depraved palate, and that fill the blood with 
scrofula and fevers. They burn out their 
nerves and brain with the fumes of tobacco and 
alcohol. 

If all this takes place among men who belong 
to Churches and claim to be governed by the Ten 
Commandments, what havoc of the life is made 



230 DIAMOND DUST. 

by those who have thrown off the restraints of 
the more special and personal of those injunc- 
tions ! 

Let us take an example of the habit of neg- 
lecting and one of observing physical and men- 
tal law — Byron and Bryant. The meteoric Byron 
indulged the worst passions. Bryant held him- 
self to the simplest appetites and the purest per- 
sonal life. Dissoluteness burned out the fuel 
meant to keep Byron's brilliant brain in force for 
years of glowing thought. Bryant lived by law, 
as do the beautiful, natural things about which 
he wrote so delightfully. He took ample sleep, 
and was up with the birds in the morning. His 
bill of fare was almost as simple as theirs — 
he breakfasted usually on oatmeal mush and 
milk. Byron was in the "sere and yellow leaf" 
when he was only a little over thirty. Bryant's 
age more than outmeasured two such rocket- 
flashes as Byron's erratic years. Seventy found 
him but little less agile in walking, climbing, 
leaping, indeed as young as at forty, except the 
few outer frost touches. Like Moses, he marched 
to his death with strength unabated. 

The disgusting taint of physical and mental 
lawlessness and consequent decay renders odious 
and dangerous Byron's magnificent imagery. 
Bryant's poetry is as sweet and fresh and 



GROWING OLD. 231 

healthful as the breath of balm, and as restful as 
a mother's evening hymn. 

Who would have his life like Byron's, flash- 
ing up luridly, and settling into murky night un- 
der the gloom of the disapproval of a more ear- 
nest time? How much better that it be like 
Bryant's, a strong, sure, steady light, ending like 
an Autumn day in calm glory, its rays slanting 
back over rich fruitage, and striking forward to 
a glorious dawn in the Morning Land ! 

Americans are in special danger of physical 
and mental degeneracy from fast living and over- 
work. Holmes says: "The human body is a 
furnace which keeps in blast threescore years and 
ten, more or less. It burns about three hun- 
dred pounds of carbon a year, besides other fuel, 
when in fair working order." We Americans are 
apt, as he says of pugilists, "to keep the vital 
fires burning with the blower up." 

Strong, mixed blood bubbles in our veins, 
some of it the best of the Old World's life, driven 
hither because dangerous under rotten tyrannies. 
Below us heave the crowding masses. Before us 
stretch measureless possibilities. -Forces push. 
Ambitions beckon, and on we go, with white 
lines about our mouths, and black furrows be- 
tween our brows. We overwork and overdrive, 
and like the wicked, Ave do not live out half our 



232 DIAMOND DUST. 

days. We tire out and drop off to sleep under 
the sod coverlet before we have fairly reached 
our best working strength. 

Albeit we would not exchange our civiliza- 
tion for that of the Norsemen, whose thick blood 
creeps through leathern veins, whose heavy jaws 
crunch the oaten cake, while their neutral-tinted 
faces are lighted dully with bovine comfort. 
No; they of the coming better time will feel to 
the full the propelling energy of this New World 
life; but they will live so by law, that they will 
not sin mortally against their physical being, and 
stretch themselves upon a bier just when they 
ought to be in the prime of vigor, their mental 
products inane sensualisms, when they ought to 
be full of power for the right. 

The mind and spirit are princes. The body 
is a castle in which they stay threescore years or 
so. Their condition is often vitally affected by 
the good or ill repair of their habitation. In 
the earlier time the magnificence of the man- 
sion eclipsed the dignity of the indwelling mag- 
nates. So now, often the greater care is given 
to polishing and strengthening the outer being. 
But the age of brawn is passing away, and the 
best thought is busy in bettering the spirit life. 
As usual, there is danger of swinging to the op- 
posite extreme. Many good people underrate 



GROWING OLD. 233 

the influence of body upon soul, and serious 
harm comes of the blunder. 

Bodies have rights that souls are bound to 
respect. They have ways of their own that are 
specially potent to avenge any infringement of 
right. If only a little finger is wronged, there 
may be an insurrection of pain that will set the 
whole system in a tumult, and throw even the 
kingly brain out of balance. 

The years become relentless Eumenides to 
those who are reckless of physical law, stretch- 
ing them upon the rack of acute suffering or the 
gridiron of slow torture. Witness the miser- 
able old age of the dyspeptic and debauchee. 

Many push their laudable purpose to secure 
a competency to such an excess that they de- 
stroy their ability to enjoy what they acquire. 

The farmer thinks to wrest riches from the 
stingy soil by his own good right arm. He 
braves storm and weariness, he drives on through 
heat and cold, and finds himself at fifty a bent, 
stiffened, old man, with a cramped brain, a hun- 
gry soul, and, after all, only a few restless, un- 
satisfactory dollars. 

The mechanic plays the same part with a 
slight change of scenery. The business man 
neglects all powers of body and mind except 
those that are necessary to the driving of a good 



234 DIAMOND DUST. 

bargain. When he grows old, whether he 
" fails" or "retires," he finds himself worn out 
and empty hearted, his faculty for love and wor- 
ship dead almost beyond hope of resurrection. 

The old Greeks took the very best care of 
their bodies. We see this illustrated in the 
Olympic games; the victor in running or wrest- 
ling was loaded with honor. When he returned 
to his city he was not permitted to enter through 
the gates, but a breach was made in the wall near 
his house, as if they would say, ' ' The city that 
has such sons to guard her has no need of 
walls." The result was the finest physical cul- 
ture, and consequent endurance. With them the 
age for military service was from twenty to sixty, 
and not, as with us, reaching only to forty-five. 

We are as certainly culpable if we neglect to 
take care of our bodies as we are if we injure 
them by our excesses. 

Many serve their bodies as rented houses are 
used. The roof leaks, the plaster begins to fall, 
the weather draws out the nails, and the clap- 
boards spring off. No matter. We will not have 
to stay here long. Yes; but we had better be 
comfortable while we do stay, and not lose time 
and strength taking care of our coughs and 
rheumatisms. 

Science, like religion, is growing wise and 



GROWING OLD, 235 

practical. Instead of hiding away in midnight 
cells, straining every nerve to discover the un- 
discoverable, it has come into our homes and 
our schools, and is teaching us how to take 
care of our hair and teeth, our eyesight and 
digestion. 

Hygiene miracles are wrought nowadays. 
Take dentistry, for instance. Years ago if the 
nerve of a tooth was injured, it was treated as 
some deal with refractory children. There was 
no inquiring into the cause of the trouble, no at- 
tempt at palliation or compromise. There was 
nothing for it, if it continued rebellious, after a 
few conciliatory pats and strokes, but to be ex- 
terminated, root and branch, though its loss could 
never be supplied. 

Can we ever forget how, in our young days, 
the weeks and months were one protracted de- 
spair from toothache torture? Wedged in be- 
tween the alternatives of the dentist's horrid 
steel and the prolonged agony of having those 
throbbing molars and incisors wear themselves 
out, one could almost have risked a Rip Van 
Winkle sleep, if he were sure of awaking tooth- 
less. We have learned of late, however, that a 
little daily care of the teeth and an early appli- 
cation of the dentist's skill will keep them in 
good condition for an indefinite period. 



236 DIAMOND DUST. 

"Oh, but it is too much trouble. I have not 
time to bother with my teeth more than is abso- 
lutely necessary to cleanliness." Ah, that is a 
mischievous and expensive carelessness that you 
can ill-afford. You may save a few minutes by 
your neglect of the simple preventive, and, by 
and by, you may spend months upon the hot 
spit of agony, lose any amount of nervous vigor, 
and pay a good round bill for repairs. 

A few years ago the papers told us how 
John Quincy Adams restored his eyesight by a 
little daily pressure upon his eyeballs. The old 
people looked at one another over their glasses 
and exclaimed, "Wonderful! How nice it would 
be to see once more without spectacles!" But 
I know of only one old lady who tried it perse- 
veringly enough to restore her sight. 

J. G. Holland tells us of an old gentleman, Dr. 
Scott, of Buffalo, who, when his eyesight began 
to fail, set himself about what he termed "ocu- 
lar gymnastics." With proper intervals of rest, 
he exercised his eyes in making minute letters. 
At length he became able to read the newspa- 
pers without glasses; "and, at the age of seventy- 
one, he wrote upon an enameled card with a 
style on a space exactly equal to that of one 
side of a three-cent piece, the Lord's Prayer, the < 
Apostles' Creed, the parable of the Ten Virgins, 



GROWING OLD. 237 

the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the 
Beatitudes, the fifteenth Psalm, the one hundred 
and twentieth Psalm, the one hundred and 
thirty-third Psalm, the one hundred and thirty- 
first Psalm, and the figures i860. Every letter 
and every punctuation mark was written exquis- 
itely/' "showing," as Dr. Holmes says of him, 
"that his eyes must be a pair of microscopes." 

Much of the decay of old age comes from in- 
activity. Sometimes when a man finds that he 
has a competence, his ambition begins to lag, 
and he turns his business over to his sons. The 
relaxation of effort would have been disastrous 
at twenty-five — -it is fatal at sixty. Unusual 
powers can not fail to lose their vigor. 

The "childishness" of age is not inevitable; 
it may be prevented by mental hygiene. There 
is a close analogy between the laws of matter 
and those that govern mind. Neglect means 
decay. Inaction is paralysis. We have seen 
pictures of East Indian fakirs who had moved 
only one arm for a dozen years or more. That 
arm retained its strength, while the other limbs 
were no more under volitive control than if they 
had been made of wood. Most people treat the 
intellect in a similar fashion. They choose a bus- 
iness or profession, and throw all their mental 
force into the one faculty that is necessary to its 



238 DIAMOND DUST. 

successful management. The other faculties He 
inactive till they become as useless as the limbs of 
the fakir. After a few years the need of using that 
one faculty ceases to crowd to activity. Then it 
falls into disuse and paralysis with the rest. The 
verdict is, " The old man has lost his mind." As 
Lowell says of a man minus his manhood, " A 
corpse crawls round unburied." 

An accident or severe illness may injure the 
physical or mental constitution, and break up the 
ordinary or normal action of one's powers, yet 
usually we may work and be strong as long as 
we will. 

Henceforth let us never say, "my memory 
is failing." Let us speak the plain truth: "Be- 
cause I am not driven to use my memory as in 
my school-days I am neglecting it, and it is grow- 
ing weak in consequence." A simple mnemonic 
exercise, the committing to memory of one text 
of Scripture a day, and the obliging of the mind 
to go over the whole of the chapter or book upon 
occasion will hold this faculty in vigor. If the 
memorizing of three hundred and thirteen dates, 
suggesting as many important points of history, 
one for each week-day of the year, were begun 
upon New Year's with a review once a week or 
once a month, a good knowledge of past events 
might be gained, and the memory would be held 



GROWING OLD. 239 

111 strength by the discipline. This will be found 
to be an excellent exercise in a family, a thou- 
sand times better table-talk than the ordinary 
chitchat. 

The terminology of "any branch of natural 
science would make as good mnemonic gymnas- 
tics, helping the young people to a sure knowl- 
edge of what they certainly need to know, and 
keeping the older folk from degeneracy on ac- 
count of the disuse of memory. 

But one says, " I am so full of work and care 
I can not find time for mental discipline." We 
take time to eat because we can not live and keep 
our strength for work without food. If we must 
starve a part of our being, let it not be the no- 
bler, the better, the immortal. 

Where there 's a will there 's a way. Elihu 
Burritt mastered languages, science, literature, 
while supporting his family by working at his 
anvil. 

Let the successful business man decide 
whether it will pay for a few paltry dollars more 
than his neighbor has the charge of, or a trifle 
better furnished house, or more elegant style of 
living, to cramp and dwarf his mind till he knows 
nothing but loss and gain and prices current. 

Let the lady who never has time for study 
and thought weigh the matter fairly, and decide 



240 DIAMOND DUST. 

whether it will not be better for her to have a 
few pieces less of the twists and tangles of 
bright worsteds, a little plainer house-gear and 
simpler adornments for her person, and secure in- 
stead that sure, quiet strength of soul that will 
enable her to ward off the attacks of old age 
by and by. 

Work or perish is the absolute law. When 
one begins to say, "I can not learn that, I am 
too old," his doom is sealed. Henceforth the 
chimney-corner! They who will work can keep 
their place in the ranks of workers in spite of 
of Time. 

Humboldt wrote his "Kosmos" at fourscore. 
Isocrates finished one of his great works at 
ninety-seven. Theophrastus wrote his* keen and 
sprightly "Characters" when a centenarian. 
Gorgias lived to the age of one hundred and 
seven, and died with the significant expression 
upon his lips, " Sleep is now beginning to lay 
me in the hands of his brother." Death came 
to Mary Somerville when she was ninety-two, 
and found her busy upon her abstruse and diffi- 
cult astronomical mathematics — working her 
problems only a few hours before she fell asleep. 

But the greatest, the saddest mistake is to 
imagine that the years must dull our devotional 
fervor, cripple our spiritual powers, and destroy 



GROWING OLD. 241 

our usefulness. It is a trick of Satan to crowd 
out of the ranks those who have the best equip- 
ment for service — a ripe, full Christian ex- 
perience. 

God has said, "I will never leave thee, nor 
forsake thee." Does not that include the whole 
of probation? "My grace is sufficient for thee, 
for my strength is made perfect in weakness." 
Does not that cover all our infirmities? "Lo, I 
am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world." Does not his presence insure constant 
development and growing usefulness? 

I remember a beautiful woman who could 
hardly have been lovelier in any of her life than 
in the last years, when she was over ninety. 
She entertained us at the piano with music that 
she composed sixty years before. She was fully 
in sympathy with all the aggressive work of 
good people, and kept pace in her prayers and 
faith with each movement. "I can't go to 
your missionary meeting to-night," she said in 
her sweet, simple way, as we were starting to 
our anniversary," but I will try and help a little 
here at home." 

"I knew you'd have a good meeting," she 
said, when we returned, her face aglow with the 
glory of the world beyond. "My heart was so 
warm when I talked to the Master about your 

16 



242 DIAMOND DUST. 

work." Who can tell which rendered the most 
helpful service that night, we at the church, or 
she in her room "talking to the Master?" 

As sunset hours are usually the most glorious 
of the day, so the last years ought to be, of 
all, most replete with beauty and excellence, 
rich with the ingatherings of time and the fore- 
shadowings of the blessedness that is soon to be 
revealed. "The hoary head is a crown of glory 
if it be found in the way of righteousness." 

For what a glorious, eternal garnering may 
one hope who has spent a long life in the serv- 
ice of the Master. 




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